pebble-time-steel-8My Pebble Time Steel was connected to my iPhone without any problem 2 days ago. Put the watch in my drawer at night, still working, then find it disconnected when I grab it yesterday morning before going to work. I thought it must be a simple re-connection issue (had this 2 or 3 times in the past, simply solved by opening the app and reconnect). Apparently this time the connection issue can’t be solved by simply opening Pebble Time app and following the instruction to “connect” my Pebble.

I tried to remove the existing Bluetooth connection in both my devices (in Pebble Time Steel and iPhone 6). Then I tried to reconnect again using Pebble Time app. This time, it successfully detected my Pebble and the “classic” Bluetooth connection could get connected without problem, but the LE connection never appeared. As a result, my smartwatch still could not do most of its “smart” features.

After few minutes of googling didn’t lead me to a solution, I decided to contact Pebble support using the app. A lot of people seems to complain in forums about poor and slow support from Pebble. I actually received good and timely support responses.

First I described the situation in my first support request, and received a reply within 30 minutes.
Their first reply was basically telling me to:
1. Place your watch on the watch charger and make sure it is charging.
2. Go to Settings > Bluetooth on your device. Find your Pebble and Pebble LE in the list > click on the blue “i” > Forget this device.
3. Hard close the Pebble app on your phone by double clicking the main iPhone button and swiping up the Pebble app.
4. Restart your phone by holding the home and lock buttons down until the apple logo appears on the screen (this should 5-10 seconds but may take longer)
5. Try pressing & holding the left + right middle + right top buttons for 40 seconds. This will put it into recovery mode.
6. It will now show up in Settings > Bluetooth as not connected/paired. Pair your Pebble (not Pebble LE) and your iPhone.
7. Re-open the Pebble app.

I could not follow their instructions immediately because the list requires me to charge my Pebble. I was at work and did not bring the charging cable. Logically, a product with 10 days battery life should not require its user to bring charging cable to work, which is quite the irony here that for doing a troubleshooting advised by their support, I needed the charging cable.

When I arrived home tonight, I tried all their steps down to every detail. I managed to put my Pebble Time Steel into recovery mode and attempted to reconnect. It showed that the pairing was successful, but once I opened Pebble Time app to restore the watch back to normal mode, it still said that my watch was not connected. I checked my iPhone’s Bluetooth menu, the classic Bluetooth connected was indeed connected, the LE connection was still nowhere to be found.

So I replied the support email again. This time I didn’t get any reply within few minutes.

Since my smartwatch is now in recovery mode, which I can not use even as a dumb-watch, I decided to do some quick browsing again to find alternative solution.
I tried resetting my iPhone’s network settings as suggested by some people, did not help my situation.
Tried few other tricks, none of them helped.

Out of desperation, I deleted Pebble Time app from my iPhone, restart my iPhone and redownload the app again from AppStore.
Magically, this time when I opened Pebble Time app, it successfully connected to my Pebble Time Steel, and then restored it to normal mode.

So the whole problem was caused by a buggy app. Something in my app’s local data prevented the app to make LE connection and removing the app (the installed it again) basically reset the local data.

My problem is solved, but not from following the troubleshooting guide from Pebble Support.

This morning I finally receive my second reply from Pebble Support, telling me to reset my iPhone’s network settings. I already did this yesterday and it did not solve my connection problem.
I replied their email that I have solved the connection issue by removing and reinstalling their app, and suggested such action to be added in their support’s list of possible solutions.

Then I write about the whole thing here, hoping it would be useful for some people.