New Watchfaces Coming To Pebble Soon
For those of you who have received your Pebble E-Paper watches, and for those of you who are about the get it soon, here's some great news for you. Pebble is planning on releasing its Watchface SDK to developers during the 2nd week of April. This SDK will allow developers to create their own watchfaces for the Kickstarter prodigy. Pebble has seen some extraordinary watchfaces released by the Pebble developer community, like a watchface that lets you play "Snake", so by releasing this SDK and garnering more developer support, Pebble can be brought to the next level.
Pebble says that the watchface SDK is still a work-in-progress, and that it's mostly just a "proof of concept". It wants developers to note that the watchface SDK will not allow them access "to the accelerometer (or magnetometer), or communication between watchfaces and smartphones (among other deficiencies)." There's a good possibility that 99% of the APIs in the SDK will change "as we move towards a full blown SDK".
Pebble also plans on releasing a firmware update next week as well. The firmware version, 1.9, helps improve user experience. Your watchfaces are now at the bottom of the stack, meaning if you keep pressing the back button, you will find your way back to your watchface. Also, by pressing the up and down buttons on the right side of your Pebble watch, you can alternate between the watchfaces you have installed. There are also "under-the-hood" changes that allows developers to more easily and quickly display text on the watches.
The new watchface SDK will open a new chapter for Pebble E-Watches. Pebble provided a few examples of watchfaces developed through the SDK, including a watchface that tells time in Dutch, a watchface with a dragon that blinks every minute, and a watchface that shows Mario (from Super Mario) grabbing a coin every minute.
Over 40,000 Pebbles E-Paper watches have been made so far, and over 85% of Kickstarter backers who ordered the long strap version of the watch will receive their watches next week. Pebble is making good progress in getting its watches out to all of its 70,000-ish backers. If you haven't ordered the watch yet, you can pre-order it now through Pebble's website for $150.
[via Pebble]