The Pebble smartwatch has been a successful piece of hardware since it got the funds to get produced. We could even call it one of the first smartwatches, sure, the screen was black and white and it wasn’t touch sensitive, not necessarily being a bad thing as the battery seems to last forever, and it provided a lot of the functionality found on more modern smartwatches when it was paired to a phone via Bluetooth. The first versions looked kind of cartoonish because of the bright colors available but then the company made a new edition of the watch. The so-called Pebble Steel had a design that was more refined and the build quality was also upgraded as it was made from metal and it had leather and steel options for bands. Their most recent competitor is the Pebble Time, which includes a steel version and for the first time, there is a color screen but it’s still made of e-paper, so the battery still lasts way more than the rest of the smartwatches.
Every version of the Pebble smartwatch has been compatible with Android and iOS devices, which is logical since the company doesn’t rely on Google or Apple, both of which have their own operating systems for this kind of devices. It seems that Apple, in particular, is blocking some apps that work with wearables if the developers don’t use their own tools such as HealthKit. A couple of weeks ago, the App Store rejected the updates for some apps that were supported on the Pebble Watch, that led to believe that the company saw this smartwatch as a strong competitor for their own Apple Watch and that was how they would eventually win some users to change their devices into their own ecosystem. It turned out to be a mistake and that they would keep supporting the Pebble. But it makes you wonder if this wouldn’t be a problem in the future, so the founder and CEO of Pebble, Eric Migicovsky has requested Google and Apple “to make sure that they’re keeping a fair and open environment for newcomers who are building on top of these platforms” to keep more and more devices interconnected and make sure they work with existing devices.