RebbleOS aims to keep Pebble watches going after June 30th

With Fitbit set to pull the plug on Pebble watches shortly, an interesting alternative to the PebbleOS is currently under development. Dubbed Rebble, its aim is to keep the hardware going for years to come.

Fitbit gave loyal Pebble watch owners a life extension earlier this year. The San Francisco company announced it will keep the watch servers going until end June, thus extending the originally set 31 December 2017 cut-off date. Fitbit says its done this to give the Pebble community more time to consider a switchover to Fitbit’s OS platform, i.e. to consider purchasing one of its fitness trackers or smartwatches.

After June 30th, Fitbit will stop support for Pebble’s infrastructure and web-based features, meaning Pebble watches will continue plodding along but with limited functionality. This is where RebbleOS comes in.

While Pebble hardware may remain frozen in time, a team of developers are hoping to maintain and advance the software. Still in development, the project began as a supplement to the official Pebble documentation.

After Pebble ceased operations, it morphed into the unofficial spearhead organization for continuing the advancement of the Pebble operating system. The developer community under its roof is currently working on replacing key pieces of the Pebble ecosystem. Even Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has endorsed the new setup.

Developers say they will not have everything in place by the time Fitbit pulls the plug on Pebble’s servers but that swapping to the new service will only require clicking on a link. The ultimate aim is to enable all the services that will disappear from June 30th. This includes voice recognition, SMS, email replies, the app store, tools used by third party developers and more. Much work still remains, though, before this is to be a perfect alternative to the Pebble OS.

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