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Android Wear 2.0 Is An Evolutionary Update To Google's Smartwatch OS (techcrunch.com)
Google is officially launching Android Wear 2.0 today -- the biggest update to the company's wearable operating system since its launch in 2014. While Android Wear 2.0 will be launching with two new flagship watches from LG -- the LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style, a number of existing Wear watches will also get this update in the coming weeks and months. TechCrunch reports: The first thing you'll notice when you get a 2.0 watch is the overall update to its design -- both in terms of the overall look but also the user experience. The look of Wear 2.0 now skews closer to Google's Material Design guidelines. While the overall look will still feel familiar to Wear 1.0 users, the update put a stronger emphasis on cards, for example. This means every notification now gets a full screen to show its preview and you can use the watch's dial to scroll through them (assuming your watch has a dial, of course -- otherwise you can obviously still use the touch screen to scroll). The other marquee feature of Wear 2.0 is support for standalone apps that don't need a companion app to run on your phone. That means developers can write apps that are purely geared toward the watch and they can then publish it on the Google Play store, which is now also available directly on the watch. That sounds more useful than it is -- unless you plan on getting an LTE-enabled watch and leave your phone at home. That's an option now that you could run Hangout or Google Music directly on the watch, but, except for runners, that's likely not a typical use case. At the end of the day, the most important use case for a smartwatch remains dealing with notifications. Everything else often feels like an unnecessary complication. [In summary, Frederic Lardinois writes via TechCrunch:] The Android smartwatch market could use a revolution to kickstart what now occasionally feels like a moribund ecosystem. Wear 2.0 doesn't feel revolutionary. It is, however, a perfectly adequate update that addresses many of the issues with Android Wear. It also puts it on parity with its competitors, like Apple's watchOS or Samsung's Tizen. It does also introduce some new use cases for LTE-enabled watches, but I can't help but feel that this will remain a niche category. Much, however, will depend on Google's hardware partners who will now have to bring Wear 2.0 to life.
Queue the "But my Casio's battery lasts for years!" and the "Only 13 people in the history of the world have purchases a smart watch" comments ...
Well, in general, maybe, but I got mine for golf and many golfers I know use them. Distance and hole layout just with a look, tracking shots is very easy, etc. There are a number of very specific use cases that they're one of the best tools on the market for
I just want to make and take calls over the watch without having to pull my phone out. Just let me answer and talk over it. The other stuff maybe someone else wants but I can't think why.
I am curious about the main pros and cons of a Wear 2 watch vs the current Apple Watch, next to the fact that they are tied to their own ecosystem of course. I have the first generation Apple Watch since a good year, and my wife has the new one. We like them. I am actually a big fan of traditional mechanical watches and yet I find that I wear the AW at least two days per week (I have 10 other mechanical watches in my rotation, hence relatively it is worn a lot). What I like most: the discreet tapping notifications and reminders, the dial with integrated activity plots, the ease of Apple pay, occasionally it is quicker to answer a call on the watch than on the phone. Also the dial designs while less plentiful than on android watches are restrained and in good taste (nothing is as offputting as a screen dial that is bright like a torch). I like to use Siri to control a few homekit devices (Siri switch on standing lamp) through it. The daily charging is less an issue than I expected. The build quality and feel is quite premium, my stainless one feels more posh than most watches in the mall at similar price levels.
At first glance, Android Wear 2 seems comparable in functionality with the difference of having round dials in the case of LG. I must say that round dials look better to me for time display. Not so sure yet for general information display, rectangular seems better for that.
Any comments on the relative merits of Android Wear 2? What does it do that the Apple Watch doesn't and vice versa?
Regardless, I think that the true breakthrough of this category of devices will come when eventually more health related sensors will be added. It is well known that Apple hired people with PHDs on non-invasive sensors for blood glucose, blood oxygen etc; I can imagine Google having done the same.
The Ars coverage of this was much more thorough. Android Wear 2.0 is nice, but Google Fit saw the most improvements. Of the two watches launching with Android Wear 2.0, the more expensive LG Sport is all about the additional sensors and activity tracking... not Notification Cards.
AppleWatch OS 3.0 added a number of features to help ensure key applications could receive background data updates that made third party apps that involved data display (as opposed to our action apps like Uber) perform much better and therefore made them more useful. Did Android Wear 2.0 do anything to help in that regard?
A lot of what makes the AppleWatch really useful is, as with iOS, the applications I can install and use later...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd like something comparable to pebble... Always on screen, week long battery life, button (tactile) navigation.
Tiny touchscreens are pretty useless - and impossible in winter with gloves (even if they are touch-enabled)
I was kind of jazzed about the LG Urbane and its stand-alone LTE capabilities, but it never really materialized. I would much rather ditch my monolith phone in favor of a watch. Add connectivity to automotive head units (Android Auto) and better and better speech recognition and the number of applications requiring a slab phone is reduced. If I could get two days of life from a watch while having it paired (even just BT) with my tablet, it would be suffice ~98% of the time for all my needs. Let me usb tether (power & data to my tablet) for high intensity work and I might never need a handheld phone again.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The review seems to have missed one thing about the on-watch Play Store which could be significant: it makes it easy for iOS users to get apps. The whole "if you want a smartwatch and use Apple, get an Apple Watch or dick around" speedbump is removed, and that's a segment who are cheerfully spendy on tech toys.
"I see people spitting on the sidewalk everywhere I go so it's not like it's going to stand out."
Yeah, it still stands out. One of you isn't less annoying and wrongheaded just because you're all annoying and wrongheaded.
Wear a headset, please. And speak quietly. Very quietly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Doesn't the play store make it easier for non-iOS users to get apps? I mean, not that it was in any way difficult or troublesome before, that's not anything I've experienced. I have had absolutely no trouble finding or getting faces or apps, and in fact, appreciate the larger display area of my phone for reading about them.
I suppose some people may have found the process formidable, but honestly, I can't imagine why.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's true that 2.0 is kind of catching up to Tizen a bit in the UI department. Still the software is not really the problem.
In reading first reviews, it seems neither of these new LGs has the processing power to run something like the voice assistant either tethered to the phone or stand alone. If you had the cpu grunt you could certainly run Hangouts and Maps stand alone, other key apps that also appear to be sluggish. And then the LTE version is too dang big and thick. With a much more efficient faster CPU and better battery life enabling a more svelte device . . . I bet these this OS would be impressive, though that goes for Tizen and iOS as well.
So at this point you might as well mostly just run these things tethered to a phone for the most part. I recently got a Gear S2 - definitely a tether baby, but a big step up from my fitbit. Just having good notifications and fitness stuff and alarms on your wrist turns out to be pretty nice. I hadn't anticipated how just being able to leave your phone in your pocket or in your bag or on a desk most of the time - well, that is a lot better than pulling it out 20-30 times a day just to see what telemarketer is calling me or some trivial text message or email. I mean some days I do not need to look at my phone. at. all.
Another generation or two then. My experience with this semi-smartwatch has me fairly convinced by next phone upgrade could well be a watch, and that would be pretty great.
It is another worthless piece of spyware shit from a marketing company.