Pebble announced on Tuesday the launch of its new native fitness tracking app, called Pebble Health, with timeline integration, making it the first time users are not required to use third-party apps to get heath and fitness data on the company's smartwatches.
Developed in partnership with researchers at Stanford University, Pebble Health allows users to track their daily activity, such as steps taken and sleep. However, instead of just showing the user's progress to the standard 10,000 steps goal, the app adjusts daily goals based on the user's previous day of activity. This means the user can strive for each day to be healthier than the last.
The built-in activity system then displays pins in the user's timeline that feature progress updates and tips to keep the user on track. This includes seeing how many hours of sleep the user got when they wake up in the morning, or the best time to get in a quick workout based on scheduled meetings in the calendar.
Data is then displayed in weekly graphs in the watch's app, so users can assess their goals and progress over time.
It's important to remember that although some Pebble smartwatches will now be able to track activity, the wearables don't feature a heart rate sensor. However, the team at Stanford University's new wearable heath lab has helped developed the algorithms for accurate activity tracking.
Pebble Health is part of the company's Firmware 3.8 update, and is only available for Pebble Time, Time Steel and Time Round smartwatches. However, users of the older models can still use third-party apps like Jawbone in order to track their health and fitness.
Those who use Pebble Health will also be able to share their fitness data to Apple Health or Google Fit to get even more insights into their health.
To access Pebble Health, users just have to update the Pebble smartphone app and install the software on the watch for the app to start tracking.
Pebble also announced that it will allow developers to build apps and watchfaces to create visualizations of the data early next year. As of now, there is no way to directly see the amount of steps taken on the smartwatch face, so this may be one of the main tasks developers take on when a new version of its software development kit is released in January.
Along with the release of Firmware 3.8, Pebble rolled out timeline support for its Classic and Steel models.
The software update is now available in the Google Play Store, with Apple's App Store expected to follow.
Source: Pebble
