Pebbles new actionable notifications mimic Android Wear

Pebble, the Kickstarter darlingthat went on to becomean international blockbuster, hasfared well against new smartwatchesfrom big-name competitors. The key toits continued success lies both inits platform agnosticism and prescience. Pebble has responded well to the changingtrends of the buddingwearablemarket. In late September, the Pebble and its pricier companion, the Pebble Steel, saw respective price reductions to $100 and $200. And recently, Pebbles software was updated to allow for continuous fitness monitoring.

Related:Pebble smartwartch starts at $100, update includes activity and sleep tracking

Some speculated those moves were fueled by thedebut of Android Wear devices, which occupy the same price bracket and sport identical functionality. The features of Pebbles newerfirmware, however, are a little more brazenly aimed at would-be Wear owners. Last month, the Pebble received full notification support for Android devices running 4.3 or later, and now, the development team is taking the next logical step forward.

Software version2.3, currently in beta, lets Pebble users interact with Android notifications. Muchlike behavior on Android Wear, alerts from many apps are actionable an SMS message can be replied to, for example, or Square Cash requests accepted, an e-mail archived, or a phone call answered. As Pebble has no touchscreen, users rely on itsphysical buttons to scroll through and select actions.

Related:Your Pebble now has full notification support, thanks to an Android app update

The Pebble team achieved the new interactions by tapping into the notification which underlies Android and Android Wear. That means developers wont have tomake changes to take advantage of the feature. Integrating Pebble with Android Wear is thanks to [Googles] open approach, a note on Pebbles blog reads.

The update, which also includes support for auto app updates and Android 4.0+ devices, will be distributed through Google Play to ownerswho sign up forPebbles beta channel.

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Pebbles new actionable notifications mimic Android Wear

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