One of the most significant questions for Pebble owners following the company being purchased by Fitbit late last year was how long the watches would continue to operate.
Pebble originally announced that it would be “going out of its way” to keep its smartwatch platform active despite the Fitbit acquisition, with plans to keep its software and services running in 2017. Since then, however, there hasn’t been much news regarding the future of Pebble.
In an effort to quell Pebble owner fears, Pebble has released a firmware update this week that disconnects the ill-fated smartwatch manufacturer’s wearables from its cloud services. As a result, whenever Pebble’s servers finally do shut down, the platform will live on by allowing owners to sideload apps and new firmware to the smartwatch. It’s likely that a vibrant community of hobbiest software developers and modders will continue to work on the platform.
While far from a perfect fix, it’s great to know that Pebble’s legacy for creating a relatively open platform will live on in some form. It’s still unclear, however, how features like dictation, messaging and weather, which all depend on cloud services, will continue to operate.
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