[I/O 2014]Android Wear

Almost

Android Wear

Moto360 Yeah, that’s a screen displaying the face. Excuse me while I clean up my pants.

Android Wear, for those of you who haven’t heard of it yet, is Android’s attempt to be not just a phone platform, but to have an open design that can be adopted by many wearable computing devices. It’s main focus for the moment is smart watches, however it was mentioned that Google Glass will get Android Wear in the future. Who knows what other devices are on the horizon.

Android Wear is probably the thing that people most expected to see at I/O and Google did not disappoint. Basically, Android wear is shaping up to be exactly what it seems like it would be: google now + notification center.

While we already knew about Android Wear and its notification mirroring, Google did clear up some aspects of how Android wear will work (at least on smart watches)

Navigation

swipe right to dismiss
swipe left to reveal more info, contextual buttons, stacked notifications, etc
swipe up to navigate all the available apps/notifications
swipe down to toggle silent mode

From the single Moto360 demo, it looks like the watch face appears in the phone equivalent of sleep mode

Interactions

Voice commands
Contextual buttons (e.g. next song, begin navigation on phone, etc)

As expected, interactions are similar to a combination of what can be done in the notification center with the addition of google now’s voice commands.

Full Apps

This one was news. It was confirm that full apps with fully customizable UI and access to sensors (presumably both on the device and a paired phone) will be possible. The example they had was ordering food. It was kind of weird and seemed like it would only be good if there were few choices (say fewer than 10). It seems more useful if you’re a creature of habit and the watch already knows approximately what you want. Hopefully we’ll see some more practical apps soon now that the full sdk is out!

Syncing

As you would expect, notifications and apps stay in sync across devices. Dismissing on your watch dismisses on your phone and vice versa.

Installation

For apps that have a full android wear portion, the app is installed to the phone from the play store and then the wearable portion is automattically synced with the device when paired. This is beautiful, IMO. If you have it on your phone, it just works on the wearable

Availability

Two smart watches are available as of today!
LG G Watch - $230
Samsung Gear Live - $200

As for the moto360 - the watch people actually care about - you’ll have to wait until “later this summer”

Tech Specs

Before we call this thread done, I want to start a discussion on the tech specs of these smart watches.

Both the G Watch and Gear Live sport the same specs:

~280 ppi display
300-400 mAh battery
1.2 GHz single core processor
512 MB ram
4 GB internal storage
gyro, accelerometer, compass

These specs are at the same compute power and resolution as the iPhone 3 and Galaxy S. In otherwords, these smartwatches have the same specs as phones from 2009.

Now, you’re probably asking, how’s the battery life? Well, Samsung claims “1 day use” which is definitely what you’d expect. What good is a watch that doesn’t last you all day? We’ll have to wait for actually battery life tests to find a real answer, though.

I’m pretty impressed with these specs for the first android wear devices. And if these specs and the ~$200 price tag are indicative of what the moto360 will be, sign me up!

home

Scuzz

I’m guessing the Moto360 is the round one?
Looks a hell of a lot nicer then the LG and Samsung.

As i said in the shoutbox yesterday, the battery life would be my only issue. It’s nothing major as i can just charge it over night.

It does look pretty slick though.

Almost

The moto360 looks better with each sneak peak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFi-QpuZfXs

Schamper

What I’m also curious about it how well the displays work in direct sunlight.

Almost

I guess when you lift it up to your face, it ups the brightness, so maybe?

LG said you can get up to 36 hours idle out of the gwatch. That’s 36 hours with the screen always on (probably at 30-40% brightness)