Pebble Smartwatch Announces iOS 7 Integration And Greatly Improved Notifications

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Today Pebble announced full support for iOS 7’s Notification Center and low-energy Bluetooth 4.0. In the past, you could only get push notifications from a limited number of iOS apps related to messaging, like Messages and Mail. Now, thanks to iOS 7, all third-party apps can send notifications directly to the Pebble with ease.

Any apps that you’ve enabled banner notifications for in iOS 7 will automatically push updates to the Pebble watch. But that’s not all; Pebble has announced some interesting partners and new tools for developers to make better apps on the platform.

Yelp, Foursquare, and GoPro are all partners with Pebble now, and they have some cool apps in the works. Yelp will show you a list of recommended places near you, and you can shake your wrist to get a random recommendation. Foursquare will allow you to check in from your wrist. GoPro’s app will let you stop and start recordings and change settings like frame rate. According to Pebble, this is just the beginning in terms of big partners that are lined up.

Pebble’s 2.0 SDK for developers allows access to the accelerometer for fitness tracking, and a new Javascript API allows for better communication with the web in apps. Developers will also be able to store data directly on the Pebble instead of having to constantly push it from a smartphone. Better communication with Bluetooth will make it easier to pair your device with the Pebble—one of the biggest pains noted by early adopters.

Pebble has shipped 190,000 watches at this point. The company has faced pretty bad supply problems in the past year, but things are starting to smooth out. All of the watch’s colors are finally in stock. A Pebble costs $150. The update to the iOS app with iOS 7 support should be available in the App Store soon.

Source: Pebble

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