Pebble launches the swanky Pebble Steel smartwatch

In April of 2012 we became familiar with the Pebble smartwatch – a simple watch gadget that connected wirelessly to a smartphone in order to display notifications. It smashed its Kickstarter target, sold over a quarter of a million units and quickly became the most well known smartwatch right at the start of the wearable gadgets boom.

Now Pebble has grown up and become the Pebble Steel. The company unveiled its second generation smartwatch today at CES 2014 in Las Vegas and it’s certainly a looker. Gone is the plastic frame and simple rubber strap and in place is a much larger, stainless steel watch face and strap.

Priced at $249 (£150), Pebble Steel comes with a metal strap and a black leather one, both being interachangeable with the watch face. The buttons located on the right side of the face are also stainless steel and the whole thing looks much more stylish than its predecessor. Finally, a sheet of ultra-tough Gorilla Glass now protects the display.

Asides from a drastic change in terms of design and materials, the Pebble Steel is still the same hardware on the inside. That means wireless connectivity with iOS and Android smartphones, around 5-7 days battery life from a single charge and the e-paper display.

Pebble also announced that its app store will arrive before the end of this month. The company teased a new store towards the end of last year and today took the opportunity to offer a more precise launch date. The store will be added to the existing Pebble app for iOS and Android, allowing users to easily browse for new apps and watch faces to install onto their Pebbles.

The Pebble Steel is available to pre-order now in matte black and stainless steel from getpebble.com.

<text-align:centre;”>