Google Delays Release of Android Wear 2.0 To 2017 (techcrunch.com)

Google announced today the next generation of its smartwatch platform -- Android Wear 2.0 -- won't be seeing the light of day this year. The company says that it will release the final version of Android Wear 2.0 in early 2017. From a TechCrunch report: While Google never talked about a final release date for Wear 2.0, its original schedule called for about 30 weeks of alpha and beta testing, which would have put the release date somewhere around the middle of December. Google, however, now says that it has gotten "tons of great feedback from the developer community about Android Wear 2.0" and that it is "committed to improve and iterate based on them to ensure a great user experience." Because of this, the plan is to continue the preview program into early 2017 at which time the first watches will receive the new version.CNET reported recently that three of the top Android Wear smartwatches maker -- LG, Huawei and Motorola -- had confirmed that they won't be releasing new smartwatches until next year, at least.

Comments

Already behind

[swimboy]

Apple's already released their second generation watches and WatchOS 3.0. Google might as well take their time and do it right at this point.

Re:Already behind

[fred6666]

and it still has no purpose, no killer app, other than being a slave to an iPhone, which means a second battery to charge.

Re:Already behind

[alvinrod]

To paraphrase a quote from Miyamoto, a delayed project is eventually good, but a rushed project is forever bad.

Not everyone who buys Apple products is some kind of crazed zealot, but they do have a small fan base that will give them a lot of slack while they iron out the kinks. I don't believe that Google really has anything like that, and if they ever did it's probably not as prominent after releasing half-baked products like Glass or killing off popular platforms like Google Reader so they can't afford to push a sloppy response out the door unless they want to be taken as seriously as Microsoft when it comes to future products.

Re:Already behind

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase a quote from Miyamoto, a delayed project is eventually good, but a rushed project is forever bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever

Re:Already behind

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple was second to market anyway; Android watches shipped before the Apple watch ever did.

Since nobody actually needs a smartwatch, and the market needs to try things to work out what anyone will actually do with a smartwatch, there's plenty of time for Google to work on this. They aren't going to find that Apple has the market sewn up in a couple of months.

Re:Already behind

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Give Apple and Microsoft credit: They both understand how important it is to keep developers happy. Google keeps pushing half-baked junk with bugs and performance problems. Was apparent with their Android Studio 2.2 rollout they didn't even do installation testing but pushed it out anyway "Because we're Google. Beta remember?"

Apple and Microsoft also give us native tools which are fast and responsive. Google uses Java because it's less work for them, but more work for their long suffering customers who have to wait 10 minutes for a prompt to appear.

Apple and Microsoft wouldn't release software of that poor quality (too often) because they're software companies and their reputations depend on it. But Google are a search company who made a shitload of money and never real got on top of dealing with third-party developers.

Steve Jobs was an asshole who bragged about quality and design. Bill Gates was as a ruthless as jobs, but a developer at heart. Eric Schmidt is an asshole brags about not paying tax. Which of these gentleman wouldn't you buy a development system from?

Madness

[blueshift_1]

A company holding back and delaying release in order to no put out a half baked product??? Madness!

Glow in the dark

[PopeRatzo]

They're having trouble finding enough Chinese slaves to paint radium onto the dials of their new smart watches.

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

And nobody cared.

The Smartwatch: still sucks at just about everything, including being a watch. Get yours today!

Re:Fix the basics first, Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded down by some human anus who can't rebut that so mods it down instead. Well here's proof that Android has a shitty development environment:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37703866/android-studio-is-incredibly-slow-and-laggy

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38037675/android-studio-2-2-gradle-sync-very-slow

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37481262/android-studio-instant-build-slow-full-build

https://teamtreehouse.com/community/why-is-my-android-studio-running-super-slow

https://infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/articles/is-your-android-emulator-just-too-slow

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/3ai9e8/android_android_studio_hangs_stutters_incredibly/

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/32ociq/android_studio_runs_painfully_slow_why_could_this/

http://www.mysysadmintips.com/windows/clients/544-android-studio-android-emulator-running-extremely-slow

http://askubuntu.com/questions/750777/android-studio-emulator-slow-performance-in-android-studio-on-ubuntu

https://infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/articles/android-development-is-30-percent-more-expensive-than-ios

Until Google fixes this, developers will prioritize iPhone apps instead.

Be the first on your block

[mnemotronic]

Be the first on your block to become part of a million watch botnet.

You thought 15000 CCTV cameras caused trouble? Insignificant compared to what a million watches can do.

Re:Fix the basics first, Google

[iampiti]

Well it's not really developed (at least mainly) by them. It's based on IntelliJ, a well known commercial Java IDE. But yes, the little that I've used it it's been really slow. For what I do I'd prefer if they had stayed with Eclipse