While smartwatches, in one form or another, have been around for a number of years, Pebble is arguably one of the very first to have had any real mainstream appeal. Since its debut, Pebble has been pretty quiet on the hardware front (aside from the Pebble Steel) but they have consistently improved the software experience.
Just last month, Pebble introduced massively improved notifications for Android users, making it so you could see any notification from your phone on your watch. And now Pebble is taking things a step further by introducing actionable notifications to the platform — at least for those that sign up for the Android Beta and have at least Android 4.0 or higher.
To get the job done, Pebble is actually piggy-backing off Android Wear apps. In other words, any Android app that has been updated with AW notification support will now work with Pebble watches as well. That means you can now delete and reply to messages and email, Hangouts and so much more.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_acvnlD0UI?feature=oembed&w=710&h=399]
It is important to note that Pebble doesn’t have a microphone and so you can’t use voice reply, thus somewhat crippling actionable notifications when compared to Android Wear. Still, there’s no denying this is a solid step in the right direction and is a great way to up the number of apps that support the Pebble platform. For more details, check out Pebble’s blog.
What do you think of this news? Is it a sign that the next-gen Pebble (whenever it comes) may continue to push forward by piggybacking off the efforts of Android Wear and perhaps even Apple Watch for those using it on iOS?