While this week has been dominated with news from IFA 2016, which has included a number of high-profile smartwatch announcements, including the new Gear S3 and ASUS’ ZenWatch 3, Pebble doesn’t want to be left out. While the firm doesn’t have a presence at the show, and they don’t have anything to announce, they’re making news of their own with a new update to the firmware on their Pebble smartwatches. This new firmware will bring new features, many of fitness-focused, to users with some of the previously-released Pebble smartwatch, and the updated app should already be available from the Play Store.
Over on the Pebble blog, the team detail the new changes, with one of the key changes being speed and performance. New system animations should now deliver a smoother overall experience as they now move quicker, and the team has generally worked on making the Pebble firmware run smoother. The fitness side of things now includes quicker ways of getting to your fitness stats on both your Pebble as well as in the Pebble app, and there are also more in-depth graphs for metrics like sleep and your step counts. The launcher has also seen some improvements, namely that there are now easier ways of accessing your timeline using Quick Views, with the option of seeing ahead three days into your agenda, and there is now a new App Glance feature making its debut here with Pebble 4.0, which make it easier to see what an app is about or has to tell you without having to actually open it.
Pebble 4.0 is compatible with the Pebble Time, the Pebble Time Steel, the Pebble Time Round as well as the upcoming Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2. Unfortunately for owners of the Classic Pebble and the Pebble Steel version 3.12.2 appears to be the latest version available. Whether or not Pebble will bring these features down to these models remains to be seen, but it is somewhat unlikely given their age at this point, especially in the case of the 2012 Pebble Classic. Those looking for more info as well as how to get the update can take a look at the link in the source down below.