Pebble Time users should soon get a lot more use out of the smartwatch’s microphone as voice control comes to a slew of new apps.
When paired to an Android phone, the Pebble Time already lets users respond to messages by voice. But now, Pebble is extending voice dictation features to third-party apps, both for Android and iPhone users.
So far, there aren’t a lot of apps taking advantage of dictation, but searching for “voice” in the Pebble app store reveals a few new additions. VoiceWeather, for instance, lets you say the name of a city to get the local forecast. Voice2Timeline adds simple notes to Pebble’s chronological Timeline view.
The new voice features are part of a firmware update that’s available now. To use the voice features, you’ll need a Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel, or Pebble Time Round. The original Pebble smartwatch from 2013 doesn’t have the necessary microphone.
Why this matters: In the past, one of the Pebble Time’s biggest weaknesses is that it didn’t have a good way to input data. So while third-party apps could show you information, there really wasn’t any good way to respond from your wrist. The first voice applications are fairly basic, but over time it’s not hard to imagine email and messaging playing a much bigger role.