Just a few hours after Apple announced Hermes, Product Red, and other bands for the Apple Watch, Pebble jumped out of the woodwork to announce three new updates coming to the Pebble Time and Time Steel.
The first update adds a Quiet Mode to the smartwatch, with plenty of custom settings. Users will be able to set the watch to silent at a certain time of day, when a calendar event happens, or it can be toggled manually off and on. The quiet mode will block notifications and incoming calls.
The second update adds even more battery life to the Pebble Time. It puts the wearable into standby mode, if the watch has been stationary for longer than 30 minutes. Pebble claims the standby mode will save 50 percent battery when turned on, but the feature is in beta mode and may not save as much as promised. Standby turns off the Bluetooth receiver on the smartwatch, meaning some notifications might not appear.
The last update adds French, German, and Spanish language support. This is helpful for the millions of Americans that speak Spanish, and should give Pebble broader appeal in Europe and Latin America, too.
All three software updates will be added in the next firmware patch. Pebble Time and Time Steel owners will be able to download the patch right now, but the standby mode is in beta and will not be turned on by default.
These are three quality of life updates to the Pebble, but the company needs to start making waves to keep the pressure on Apple Watch, Android Wear, and Samsung’s Gear S2. Apple has already managed to surpass Pebble in number of apps, and Pebble isn’t anywhere near Apple in smartwatch sales, it needs a new killer feature to spark interest again.
