 Hey everyone, Lauren Good reporting for The Verge. I'm at Pebble's offices in Redwood City in Silicon Valley, and today we're taking a hands-on look at the first update to the original Pebble from 2013. This is the Pebble 2, and the biggest difference is that it has optical heart rate sensors. Let's take a look. So one of the first things you'll notice about the new Pebble 2 is that this right here is Corning Gorilla Glass. The original Pebble had a plastic coating over it. It's also thinner, and it's definitely lighter than the original Pebble. But the big news here is the addition of the optical heart rate sensors. Pebble recently got into health tracking with its watches, and it uses a variety of different sensors and algorithms to determine what kind of activity you're doing. But with the addition of optical heart rate sensors, the company says it will be able to better track things like when you're sleeping or what your heart rate is when you're actually exercising. The watch has the same silicone straps as previous Pebble watches, and if you have straps from another model, you'll be able to swap them in and out. It has the same three physical buttons on this side, physical button over here. It's not a touchscreen smartwatch, unlike most other smartwatches out there. So the way you kind of navigate through the interface is by pressing various buttons. Pebble Today is also announcing an update to its Pebble Time series. Previously you could buy a Pebble Time and a Pebble Time Steel, but now they've combined the two. And you'll notice that the bezel is much smaller than the bezel on previous models. You can see up to 50% more of the display. And one of the software features that's new with Pebble is called Actions. This means that if you press this button up here, you have easy access to core functions of certain apps that you can program in the main Pebble app. So for example, here, the weather, you just see the weather right away. You can send a text to someone you designate to be the person you want to send texts to. You can just automatically tell it your current location, press an Uber with just a couple of presses on the button. The idea here is that the interaction is supposed to be pretty shallow. You don't have to go through multiple screens or press multiple buttons in order to do that one thing you want to do with an app. Pebble says it has sold 1.8 million smartwatches to date and that they're pretty happy with that. But that's not nearly as much as something like the Apple Watch or even Fitbit sales. Pebble says that it sees itself as sort of the swatch of the smartwatch world. It's meant to be fun, accessible, and relatively inexpensive. The Pebble 2 goes on sale today on Kickstarter for $99 and the company says it expects it to ship in September. The Pebble Time 2 goes on sale on Kickstarter as well for $169 and that will ship in November.
 Hey everyone, Lauren Good reporting for The Verge.
 I'm at Pebble's offices in Redwood City in Silicon Valley, and today we're taking a hands-on
 look at the first update to the original Pebble from 2013.
 This is the Pebble 2, and the biggest difference is that it has optical heart rate sensors.
 Let's take a look.
 So one of the first things you'll notice about the new Pebble 2 is that this right here is
 Corning Gorilla Glass.
 The original Pebble had a plastic coating over it.
 It's also thinner, and it's definitely lighter than the original Pebble.
 But the big news here is the addition of the optical heart rate sensors.
 Pebble recently got into health tracking with its watches, and it uses a variety of different
 sensors and algorithms to determine what kind of activity you're doing.
 But with the addition of optical heart rate sensors, the company says it will be able
 to better track things like when you're sleeping or what your heart rate is when you're actually
 exercising.
 The watch has the same silicone straps as previous Pebble watches, and if you have straps
 from another model, you'll be able to swap them in and out.
 It has the same three physical buttons on this side, physical button over here.
 It's not a touchscreen smartwatch, unlike most other smartwatches out there.
 So the way you kind of navigate through the interface is by pressing various buttons.
 Pebble Today is also announcing an update to its Pebble Time series.
 Previously you could buy a Pebble Time and a Pebble Time Steel, but now they've combined
 the two.
 And you'll notice that the bezel is much smaller than the bezel on previous models.
 You can see up to 50% more of the display.
 And one of the software features that's new with Pebble is called Actions.
 This means that if you press this button up here, you have easy access to core functions
 of certain apps that you can program in the main Pebble app.
 So for example, here, the weather, you just see the weather right away.
 You can send a text to someone you designate to be the person you want to send texts to.
 You can just automatically tell it your current location, press an Uber with just a couple
 of presses on the button.
 The idea here is that the interaction is supposed to be pretty shallow.
 You don't have to go through multiple screens or press multiple buttons in order to do that
 one thing you want to do with an app.
 Pebble says it has sold 1.8 million smartwatches to date and that they're pretty happy with
 that.
 But that's not nearly as much as something like the Apple Watch or even Fitbit sales.
 Pebble says that it sees itself as sort of the swatch of the smartwatch world.
 It's meant to be fun, accessible, and relatively inexpensive.
 The Pebble 2 goes on sale today on Kickstarter for $99 and the company says it expects it
 to ship in September.
 The Pebble Time 2 goes on sale on Kickstarter as well for $169 and that will ship in November.