Ever since its start there has been one question that has yet to be answered. Why doesn’t the Pebble SmartWatch have support for Emoji? The Pebble has always been one of my favorite smart watches. It’s able to push notifications to my wrist, control my music, and best of all, it can last me up to 7 days on a single charge.
Though the Pebble is only a ‘one-way’ device, it serves as the best smart watch available for the iPhone. In fact, it’s the only smart watch available for the iPhone.
The Pebble runs on a custom OS built by the Pebble team. Today, Pebble releases version 2.5 of its firmware, which includes emoji and iOS 8 support.
Here’s Pebble’s official release notes:
- Added support for popular emojis, with more to come!
- Added magnetometer support, enabling compass and wayfinding apps.
- Added iOS 8 compatibility: dismissing notifications from Pebble now clears them from Notification Center on devices running iOS 8.
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
Being a Pebble user myself, I’ve always chose to use a third-party for my Pebble’s firmware. Specifically, the PebbleBits firmware. The PebbleBits firmware is somewhat like jailbreaking your iPhone. It adds functionality similar to Activator, has the ability to remove stock applications and watch faces, and supports adding multiple languages. The latest version of the Pebble software eliminates one of these frustrations.
In addition to emoji support, this new firmware now supports iOS 8. This just isn’t an ‘fix the code to work with iOS 8,’ it also adds a neat feature. Dismissing notifications from your Pebble will now automatically dismiss these notifications from the Notification Center on your iPhone.
A less interesting feature, the new firmware allows you to use the built in magnetometer. Which means apps such as a compass will now be able to take advantage of the watches built in magnetometer.
To pick up this new firmware, simply fire up the Pebble app on your iPhone, tap on support, then Update Your Pebble. Though the team notes the app should automatically prompt you to update.
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