If you’ve been wondering why the Pebble appstore hasn’t (really) landed on Android yet, except for a beta channel that’s fairly unstable, then you probably need not wonder any more. Lead software engineer from Pebble Kean Wong took to the Pebble blog to explain this disparity and what’s being done:
The reason why the Android version of the 2.0 Pebble app has lagged the iOS version is fundamentally pretty simple – it has purely been a matter of resources. In order to ship a high quality, reliable Android experience that will work for many thousands of users across the myriad of devices and operating systems, we need engineers working on the Android app who are both fantastic engineers and great Android developers.
There should be no surprise that this is proving to be a difficult process; not only do they have to nail the user experience, but there’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes as well which need to be worked out, such as ensuring compatibility between different app and watch versions, upgrading watch apps and faces without bombing out data, and making sure the whole process is as user friendly as possible so non-tech savvy users don’t freak out.
As we’ve reported earlier, there is a beta of the Pebble appstore available, and while it certainly works, it’s not without its bugs. In fact, I’d call it a very unstable experience just at the moment, but it’s certainly a very promising sign of what’s to come. We wouldn’t advise installing it unless you’re really prepared to work with it a bit — it really isn’t ready for a public release yet.
Pebble is also looking to hire new Android developers, potentially to work on this project as well as others down the track, so we should have some faith that the appstore will make its way to Android properly in the not too distant future.
