Pebble comes of age with second-gen Steel; brings along new partners, app store

At CES 2014, Pebble has come to the forefront with a slew of announcements. It was last year at CES that the company had announced to finally start shipping its smartwatch after a string of serious delays. It now adds the new Pebble Steel to the portfolio.

Featuring the same e-paper display that made the original a long-lasting device, the Pebble Steel is rated 5 to 7 days of battery life and has a waterproof design. The display has Gorilla Glass protection along with an anti-fingerprint coating. It’s everything we wanted to see in the next-gen avatar. This one is sleeker too and sports a more sophisticated look, indicating that Pebble has grown up slightly. Built of CNC-machined stainless steel, it will be available in brushed stainless and black matte.

Pebble comes of age

The lower left of the device shows a RGB LED that indicates the charge status of the device. The company has included both metal and black leather band options in the retail package.

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Apart from the new device, the company has also launched a new app store for the wearable and developers can reportedly start submitting their apps (and presumably games) from January 9.  Along with these launches, Pebble has also announced partnerships with Pandora, ESPN, and Mercedes-Benz to bring app support. Currently, the company’s partners include Yelp, Foursquare, GoPro, and iControl.

This looks like a solid sophomore effort from the company and with more apps on the horizon, Pebble could just have a huge leap in the smartwatch race.