Your Pebble smartwatch will be able to do double-duty as a fitness tracker, thanks to a new partnership with Misfit. Misfit makes fitness and sleep monitor Shine, and worked with Pebble to create a watchapp that lets Pebble owners count steps and track activities without needing a smartphone.

The watchapp will also interact with an upcoming version of Misfit's iOS app to offer additional tracking metrics, such as calories burned and distance traveled.

Misfit is the latest company Pebble is working with to extend the functionality of its smartwatch. There are already Pebble apps for RunKeeper, Puma and Strava, and many other third parties have written apps to take advantage of Pebble's accelerometer, or to pair with existing smartphone apps.

Image: Pebble

Pebble said the Misfit watchapp partnership is just the first of an ongoing collaboration between Pebble and the fitness company, and that both companies want to focus on bringing "health and fitness tracking to all."

Not needing a smartphone is a great move in the right direction for truly converging the wearable worlds of fitness trackers and smartwatches.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.