New Pebble actionable notifications vs Android Wear [VIDEO]
Yesterday Pebble announced version 2.3 of their beta app for Android. With this update Pebble users can interact with actionable notifications from Android Wear. This is a very big deal. Actionable notifications are the “actions” you see by swiping left on a notification in Android Wear. A simple example is the “Reply” action from an SMS message.
Any action you can take on Android Wear can now be done with a Pebble (except for voice-to-text, obviously). We have a Pebble Steel with the latest software and the updated Android app in the house, so we put it up against the Moto 360 to see how the new notifications compare with Android Wear. Let’s take a look.
When a notification arrives on your Pebble you can now press the “Select” button to slide out a menu with actions. In the photo above you can see the “Reply” action from Google’s Messenger app on both Pebble and Android Wear. The actions that show up in this slide-out menu depend on the notification. Press the corresponding button to take action.
In the case of Google’s Messenger app we can choose from a list of emoji or quick replies. You can’t dictate a personal response like you could with the Moto 360, but this is still a huge step forward. If you’re busy you can quickly send a short reply and not have to pull out your phone. Check out the video below to see the new notifications in action.
Pebble notifications are getting a lot better, but they still lack one big feature. You can’t dismiss a notification from your phone with Pebble’s built-in notification system. Luckily there are great 3rd-party apps that can dismiss notifications from the phone. Hopefully Pebble makes it a default feature in the future.
What do you think about Pebble’s new actionable notifications? Is Android Wear still better? Which do you prefer?