There, but for the grace of Google, go I
When we’re talking about the best of the best fitness trackers and smartwatches these days, examples like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 come to mind. But if you’ve been into smart wear for a while, you’ll be aware of Pebble, a promising startup crowdfunded its way to producing adorable, cult-favorite watches with e-paper displays, only to acquired by Fitbit, which has since been acquired by Google. Perhaps, owing to its fandom and where it’s ended up, the official Pebble watch app is now getting a new lease on life with Google enabling 64-bit support for the app, thus making it compatible with the newly launched Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro flagships.
Although loyal Pebble wearable users could no longer download the companion app from the Play Store anymore, the app and the cloud services it relies on have been kept alive by the Rebble team, a group of like-minded individuals who vowed to support Pebble watches even after the company had given up on them in 2016. Their makeshift solution has worked for most smartphones up until recently when it hit a brick wall for devices like the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro which only support 64-bit apps, blocking the installation of 32-bit apps entirely. That move is part of Google’s wider effort to kill off 32-bit apps entirely.
To get Pebble fans over the hump, Google was seemingly gracious enough to post the first update to the Pebble app APK (v4.4.3) in about four years, thus officially enabling compatibility with its two recent flagships. The good news was shared by Rebble team member Katharine Berry along with a brief changelog on Reddit, The Verge reports. Pebble users can get the updated APK for their host device from Rebble’s website.
In addition to enabling support for the new Pixel flagships, this Pebble APK will also work with all future smartphones that only support 64-bit apps. Another major change in this new version is that can Caller ID functionality has been greatly improved on newer Android versions. One of the users on the Reddit post mentions that the update also allows users to get rid of the app’s persistent notification.
And to think that the original Pebble watch is nearing a decade old.
