Pebble Corporation is very well know for its visionary ideas. Ideas that kept its incredible smartwatches Pebble and Pebble Steel relevant on the market years after their release. They key to such longevity is regular software updates that bring new features to existing hardware. Multilanguage support, actionable notifications and many other fetures delighted Pebble users to no end.

This worked amazingly well so far. But now Pebble is finally on the verge of releasing new hardware as well. Color Pebble Time is scheduled (as of this writing) to be released in May and a shinier version – Pebble Time Steel is to be shipped in July. Both are getting brand new OS with time-oriented Timeline interface that will streamline the way you interact with the watch.

But what about users of existing Pebbles? Are they doomed to use obsolete devices? Pebble could simple focus on the new hardware and just tell existing owners “you want new features? Buy the new watch!” But fear not! Original Pebble and Pebble Steel are getting Timeline OS too. But how did Pebble manage to keep the cost of such major upgrade down to the very low, low price of free? The genius stroke again. This time the idea was borrowed from another e-ink device, namely Kindle by Amazon. You can get one at a very cheap price with special offers included. Special offers means you occasionally see an unobtrusive ad for a product or service, that’s it. Similarly, when existing Pebbles are upgraded to firmware v3.0, their Timeline will be injected with offers from Pebble partners – all highly relevant, all targeted specifically to you and your use of Timeline and the watch in general.

And the beauty of it – you don’t even have to click it! Just merely scroll by 😉