It’s been an extremely good week for the folks at Pebble. The company announced its third smartwatch on Tuesday and the Kickstarter for that product, the Pebble Time, hit $10 million in just two days. Not content with one major announcement, the company today launched Pebble SDK 3.0.
The new Pebble is markedly different to the original Pebble and the Pebble Steel. Not only is it thinner and lighter, but it also has a colour e-paper display and a completely overhauled UI. The Pebble Time doesn’t launch until May, but the new SDK is available now to all Pebble developers.
The good news is that all current Pebble apps are compatible with the Pebble Time (so you don’t have to tear your app apart to get it working on the newest hardware) and all apps developed with SDK 3.0 will also work with the Pebble Steel and original Pebble watch. Some minor changes to your app will allow you to switch to SDK 3.0, which will in turn allow you to add colour support.
Other new features in 3.0 include support for 64 colours, new animation framework, and PNG and animated PNG support. Pebble also revealed that both the Pebble Steel and the original Pebble will be updated to the new timeline UI later in the year.
Pebble has already generated more than $10.6 million from nearly 50,000 Kickstarter backers. The Pebble Time starts shipping worldwide in May and will be priced at $199 when it hits retail availability. The special Kickstarter price is $179.
[source]Pebble[/source]
