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Android Wear 2.0 Gets A Keyboard, Standalone Apps, Activity Recognition, New UI (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google unveiled the biggest update to Android Wear yet at Google I/O -- Android Wear version 2.0. Google VP of Engineering for Android Wear David Singleton said the new version represents a "holistic pass across the design of the whole system" and focuses on providing users more glanceable information, improved messaging tools (including support for keyboards, handwriting recognition and smart replies), as well as new fitness and wellness features. The design features improved Material Design aesthetics with an emphasis on color. By default, the navigation drawer is always at the top of the screen and notifications themselves will always show up at the bottom. Android Wear 2.0 features standalone apps that communicate directly over the Internet via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or cellular. Apps are no longer exclusively relying on a tethered phone or cloud syncing. There's a Complications API, which allows developers to pass raw data to watch faces. Wear 2.0 adds two new input methods: a swipe-style keyboard for typing and a handwriting recognition mode to sketch letters on your watch's screen to spell out messages. There have also been various Google Fit-related improvements to make Android Wear watches better fitness trackers. Android Wear 2.0 is available today as a developer preview, with the finished product being released this fall.
Stop upgrading and updating and changing everything every few months or even years. You need to let people, both users and programmers, catch up to what your hardware and software can do.
If all you have is a moving target, like SEGA did by launching one console, one upgrade and two more consoles within only a few years, people will move to something more stable. Programmers don't want to waste time making something that will only be used for a few months or a year or two, so they move to something more stable. And without programmers, your users will move to whatever other system or platforms those programmers have moved to.
Virtually all of this will just make battery life worse, which is the biggest problem with wearables today. They keep trying to jam wearables down our throat without the necessary battery technology to make them viable. Nobody wants to charge their watch every day for the confidence of checking a text message on it.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Version 2.0 exists because version 1.0 was an abject failure in the market. Also applies to Microsoft Surface which is up to version 4 with still no buyers in sight.
There's a Complications API, which allows developers to pass raw data to watch faces.
A "complication" is a traditional domain-specific term related to watches, and just means a feature above and beyond standard time-telling (such as moon phases or a calculator).
If you don't know what a complication is related to watches, I could see how "Complications API" is a strange term and might be misinterpreted as a typo of "complicated API".
Otherwise, that sentence seems self-explanatory.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
My wife has an Apple Watch, I have a Moto 360 and a Samsung Gear Fit. The Apple watch and the Moto 360 are hobbled by software problems but the unforgivable sin is poor battery life. Both of these devices can barely make it through a work day - forget about going out at night with either unless you charge them after work.
My Samsung Gear Fit - while not technically a smartwatch is a smart-enough watch that gives me alerts, tells me the time, tracks my activity and has days long battery life.
I want my next watch to be lighter, cheaper, and have fantastic battery life.
with the finished product being released this fall.
It is already fall (autumn) in the southern hemisphere.
I should have been more clear in my post.
I want a smart-enough watch with good battery life that doesn't look awful. Pebble's watches look clunky and have displays that look pixelated enough to belong in the 80's.