It was nearly a year ago the Pebble decided to yet again turn to Kickstarter so that it could fund the next part of its vision. The firm would offer three new devices and the excitement from backers was evident as the campaign would eventually raise over 12 million dollars. After several months and a steady flow of updates, there was an odd story that began floating around the internet that stated that Pebble was being acquired by Fitbit. A month later, the rumor would turn into reality, with Fitbit closing the deal for a rumored $40 million. This sale would leave Pebble owners with many questions about their devices and now the company finally has answers.
According to the Pebble developer blog, there is a new software update the devs have been working on to liberate supported devices from the cloud. Previously, Pebble devices needed to be authenticated in order to function. With the new update, even without authentication, apps will still continue to work and can be side-loaded should the servers be unavailable.
For the full details of the release, you can check out the notes for the iOS and Android apps below.
Pebble App for iPhone 4.4 Release Notes
- If Pebble's authentication servers can't be reached, users can skip the login process, but the Pebble appstore will not be available. Apps can only be installed via side-loading if this occurs.
- If Pebble's update servers can't be reached, the app will be able to install the latest compatible firmware for the paired device, plus the relevant language packs.
- We removed the option to Contact Support but users can still export diagnostic data (including the Health database) by tapping Share Diagnostics.
- Health data collection and various telemetry reporting has been removed.
- The option to suggest new features has been removed.
- Fixed a bug which would “crown” your first day of step counts, even if no activity was recorded yet.
- Developers can now side-load a service configuration to change which servers the Pebble app communicates with.
- The Developer menu is now easier to find within the new Settings tab.
- Turning on Health synchronization in Settings now writes heart rate data to Apple’s Health app.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when configuration pages attempted to open an image picker using HTML5 file input.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when Rocky.js apps used Clay configuration pages.
Pebble App for Android 4.4 Release Notes
- If Pebble's authentication servers can't be reached, users can skip the login process, but the Pebble appstore will not be available. Apps can only be installed via side-loading if this occurs.
- If Pebble's update servers can't be reached, the app will be able to install the latest compatible firmware for the paired device, plus the relevant language packs.
- We removed the option to Contact Support but users can still use the functionality to export diagnostic data (including the Health database).
- Health data collection and various telemetry reporting has been removed.
- The option to suggest new features has been removed.
- Fixed a bug which would “crown” your first day of step counts, even if no activity was recorded yet.
- Developers can now side-load a service configuration to change which servers the Pebble app communicates with.
The update is currently available for iOS via the Apple App Store and will arrive on Android's Google Play Store after it is released to the beta channel.
Source: Pebble via Engadget | Pebble time image via Kickstarter
2 Comments - Add comment