Pebble Timeline UI is now ready for original Pebble and Pebble Steel watches

Update: Good news for owners of vintage Pebbles (on Android AND iPhone)
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Pebble Timeline UI is now available for the original Pebble and Pebble Steel smartwatches.

With beta testers on Android over the past week, the update is now available for both iPhone and Android users. Pebble Time for Android 3.8 and Pebble Time for iPhone 3.5 upgrades classic Pebbles and Pebble Steels to Timeline UI which includes unlimited apps. Here's how to get the update on your Pebble device.

Read this: Pebble Health wants you to ditch your fitness tracker

The headline feature of this version of Pebble's software brings calendar events and info from third party apps into a scrollable, glanceable stream of past, present and future items. Apple has since launched a similar feature, called Time Travel, for watchOS 2.

The new software also ends the limit on the number of apps and watch faces that users of the legacy Pebble devices can store at one time. It's very impressive that Pebble is supporting its first smartwatches like this, even if the job was a painstaking, longterm job to get it done.

In Pebble's release, it notes that the Pebble Time 3.8 firmware includes an optimised interface for the classic watches.

Read this: What you need to know about the Pebble Time Round

Not an easy fix

Speaking to Wareable at Web Summit 2015 in Dublin, Pebble's CEO, Eric Migicovsky, said: "In December, we're planning to roll [Timeline] out. It's going to be an opt in beta at first so anyone who wants to try it, can get their hands on it.

"I've been using it. It's actually pretty cool, I've always been on the latest Pebble obviously. But it's a hell of a lot of fun to put on my Kickstarter watch and try it out and use it when I'm going cycling or running."

Earlier this year, Pebble confirmed that the feature would make its way to earlier models and posted a teaser video of how it would work. But Pebble owners took to forums and social media to complain that the latest smartwatch, the Pebble Time Round, was launched before Timeline UI rolled out to existing users.

Migicovsky wants to look after the original community that put Pebble on the wearable tech map. And this year, the company has sold "a ton more" original Pebbles and Pebble Steel watches, showing that there's still a market for an affordable, reliable smartwatch.

"At the end of the day these are basically people who bet on Pebble," said Migicovsky. "They put their money on Pebble and we want to make sure we can do right by them. One thing I didn't notice until I switched back to the original Pebble is that a lot of the colour watch faces that people have been building, the developers have written black and white versions of them as well which is really awesome."

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Sophie was Wareable's associate editor. She joined the team from Stuff magazine where she was an in-house reviewer. For three and a half years, she tested every smartphone, tablet, and robot vacuum that mattered. 

A fan of thoughtful design, innovative apps, and that Spike Jonze film, she is currently wondering how many fitness tracker reviews it will take to get her fit. Current bet: 19.

Sophie has also written for a host of sites, including Metro, the Evening Standard, the Times, the Telegraph, Little White Lies, the Press Association and the Debrief.

She now works for Wired.


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