Connect a Pebble to two devices

I wish I had known this earlier. Would have saved me some money and hassle. 

I have a Pebble Time (I love it! Sucks that they went out of business). I used to have it connected to my iPhone but found that it drains more battery. So I started using it with my Android and found that to be a better match. Especially since I use my Android for listening to music and there are Pebble apps like MusicBoss that make it so much easier to control music on the Android via Pebble. I still wanted something just to get notifications from iPhone and had played around with devices like the Microsoft Band and later even having a second Pebble just for the iPhone (so I had a Pebble on each hand :p). 

I got rid of all that (the Band broke, the Pebble’s outdated) so now I am back to one Pebble and two phones. Randomly Googling on whether I can hook up both to the same Pebble brought me to some Reddit posts that explained it’s possible. 

In my excitement I didn’t save the links but the idea is simple. First you pair the Pebble with your iPhone (if its already paired with Android, no problemo just turn off Bluetooth on the Android for a while). Go through the motions and you’ll see Pebble and iPhone are connected via Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE (Low Energy). Now pair the Pebble with Android (or turn on Android Bluetooth if previously turned off as above). Android will pair via Bluetooth. At the same time the iPhone will stay connected via Bluetooth LE. 

Turns out Pebble uses Bluetooth for data transfer and control (and optionally notifications) – which is what I want with Android anyways! – and Bluetooth LE if available for notifications – which is what I want from iPhone. So it’s a win-win situation. 

I tested by calling both devices and in either case the Pebble too buzzed. Nice!