Pebble smartwartch starts at $100, update includes activity and sleep tracking (updated)

By Williams Pelegrin Published October 2, 2014

Pebble Smartwatch — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Yesterday, Best Buy was offering the Pebble smartwatch for $100. Now, Pebble announced that the price drop is permanent, as the company plans to team up with more retail partners in order to increase its visibility. The $50 price drop also applies to the Pebble Steel, which will now go for $200. In addition to the price drops, Pebble also detailed its smatwatch’s next update to firmware 2.6.

The new update, now available for both the original Pebble and Pebble Steel, arrives with activity tracking and sleep monitoring. Creating the backbone of this effort are new health and fitness apps from Misfit, Jawbone, and Swim.com.

Misfit’s app has been updated to allow for continuous 24/7 activity tracking and sleep monitoring. Meanwhile, Jawbone’s Up app shows daily and weekly activity progress. This version of the app, with a purple icon, doesn’t depend on the company’s fitness band. The Up app with the blue icon, however, does depend on the band, so that’s something to keep in mind. Finally, Swim.com’s app allows you to measure distance, pace, times, strokes, and efficiency while you’re swimming. Don’t forget that both the original Pebble and Pebble Steel are rated at 5 ATM, so both can be used in the water.

The new firmware update also brings along a few other goodies, which include the following:

Quick Launch: Set up shortcuts from a watch face to your favorite Pebble apps with a long press of the Up or Down buttons.
Select button: It once again dismisses notifications when paired with an Android or iOS device on iOS 7 or lower. iOS 8 users get notification dismissal for both Pebble and the paired device when pressing Select.
Bug fixes and improvements

As previously stated, the new Pebble firmware is now available for download. You should see a prompt to download the update when you open the Pebble app on your device.

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Williams Pelegrin

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…

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