Mobile Technology

Five things Android Wear needs more of to really take off

Five things Android Wear needs more of to really take off
Android Wear has revolutionary potential
Android Wear has revolutionary potential
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Android Wear has revolutionary potential
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Android Wear has revolutionary potential
Speak a command to get a Lyft
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Speak a command to get a Lyft
Communicate with no hands and just one wrist
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Communicate with no hands and just one wrist
Follow a recipe, even with messy hands
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Follow a recipe, even with messy hands
Wear was unveiled at Google I/O 2014
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Wear was unveiled at Google I/O 2014
Notifications and Google Now cards on Wear
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Notifications and Google Now cards on Wear
An Android Wear home screen
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An Android Wear home screen
Wear listens for commands
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Wear listens for commands
Wear didn't quite hear this command correctly (it should be "Gear live")
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Wear didn't quite hear this command correctly (it should be "Gear live")
The Samsung Gear Live
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The Samsung Gear Live
Wear makes getting home easier
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Wear makes getting home easier
Reminders on Wear
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Reminders on Wear
Wear needs to pair with an Android 4.3 or later phone to function
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Wear needs to pair with an Android 4.3 or later phone to function
Turn-by-turn directions on your wrist are a killer feature
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Turn-by-turn directions on your wrist are a killer feature
Navigating is a little less frictionless on Wear
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Navigating is a little less frictionless on Wear
The LG G Watch
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The LG G Watch
The LG G Watch comes with numerous watch face choices
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The LG G Watch comes with numerous watch face choices
A key Wear shortcoming is lack of apps
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A key Wear shortcoming is lack of apps
When Wear can go no further, you see this
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When Wear can go no further, you see this
Archiving new emails saves time
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Archiving new emails saves time
LG G Watch and charger
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LG G Watch and charger
LG G Watch in listening mode
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LG G Watch in listening mode
The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live (right)
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The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live (right)
The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live (left)
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The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live (left)
The Martian Notifier has a one-line display but remembers notifications longer than Wear
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The Martian Notifier has a one-line display but remembers notifications longer than Wear
The upcoming Moto 360
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The upcoming Moto 360
Navigating on two wheels
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Navigating on two wheels
The Moto 360 could bring more style to wearables
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The Moto 360 could bring more style to wearables
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Android Wear-powered watches have made their way into the wild, but the wider public of consumers seems to have taken little notice. Join Gizmag, as we list five things that the Android Wear ecosystem could use a bit more of to really get the general public excited about the prospect of wearing Android on their wrists.

For early adopters and mobile or gadget-obsessive types like me, the northern summer kicked off with the kick-off of Android Wear at Google I/O, and by the first week of July, new Wear-powered smartwatches from Samsung and LG started to make their way into the wild.

At least a few of them did. There's no official data on sales of Samsung's Gear Live watch or the LG G G Watch, but so far I'm the only person I've seen wearing one. Media attention and general interest in Android Wear has also appeared to wane in the weeks after the release of the platform and two initial watches running it.

It's a bit of a shame, too, as I found my time with an LG G Watch – generally considered to be slightly inferior to Samsung's Gear Live watch – to be quite enlightening with regard to the clear potential of Wear. With that in mind, here's my list of five things that the Android Wear ecosystem could use a bit more of.

A key Wear shortcoming is lack of apps
A key Wear shortcoming is lack of apps

More apps

This is a problem that seems to be taking care of itself, although too slowly for my taste. Search the Google Play Store and elsewhere for Android Wear-compatible apps and you'll find perhaps a few hundred apps of varying usefulness and quality, but so far Google has only seen fit to include less than 50 of them in its curated collection of Wear-able apps. (Google does appear to be updating this list, although I can't say how frequently.) Of that list, I only count about a dozen that I could ever foresee using, and I'm including apps like Tinder and Lyft that are of little use to me personally, but I can imagine how they could be useful to other people in Wear mode.

Of course, Android apps that use notifications will at least be capable of pushing those notifications to your wrist, but most non-Wear smartwatches also have this capability. It's the ability of Wear to go deeper and interact with apps that makes it an exciting platform. Not being able to act on notifications from big names like Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook makes me worry that the Wear app roster will remain devoid of significant value, much like the current lineup of Windows 8 "metro" apps.

Speak a command to get a Lyft
Speak a command to get a Lyft

The good news here is that I hear about cool new Wear apps just about every day, from the first game, called Swip3, designed with an Android smartwatch in mind, to simple apps that use the watch to control the volume on your phone or set off an alarm to help you find it in your sofa cushions. There's even a Wear app to help you quit smoking and Facebook has announced Wear support for its Messenger app is on the way. That's a great start, but it's going to take a deeper library of well-known apps to keep average consumers from being disappointed with the platform.

More functionality

The entire concept of smartwatches is built off the notion that it should be easy to view notifications without having to pull out your phone, but again, Android Wear's advantage is its ability to go deeper with apps. Ordering a car from Lyft by simply speaking a command and getting turn-by-turn navigation instructions via vibrations on your wrist are delightful slices of the Jetsonian future we've all been waiting for.

Turn-by-turn directions on your wrist are a killer feature
Turn-by-turn directions on your wrist are a killer feature

Within a few days of using Wear, I found myself increasingly frustrated when I ran into the platform's equivalent of a brick wall – a screen asking me if I'd like to open the app in question on my phone. This is the default option Wear gives when there are no further actions that can be taken from the watch.

The answer was almost always no, I don't want to open this app on my phone. Perhaps my phone is charging in the other room or I'm trying to be subtle without pulling it out, or yes, maybe I'm just too lazy to dig in my pocket right now. Often I would find myself wanting to browse through my entire Gmail inbox on my watch, not just the latest notifications. And once notifications are dismissed, they're gone forever, which I found to be another frustrating limitation in Wear. Even much simpler smartwatches like the Martian Notifier have a notification history feature.

The Martian Notifier has a one-line display but remembers notifications longer than Wear
The Martian Notifier has a one-line display but remembers notifications longer than Wear

And yes, I would be willing to watch a YouTube video on my tiny watch face if only Google would allow it.

More refinement

My complaints in this section are pretty minor. For the most part, Wear does seem to be a stable, almost ready for prime time product, but I did stumble across some bugs pretty quickly. When navigating for example, the Maps app on my LG G Watch didn't always display all details of my route on screen. I'd need to swipe back and forth to make them appear after being buzzed to prepare for my next turn.

I also found that voice dictation had a very low tolerance for any background noise. I can't say for sure if this is a software or hardware problem, so the fault could lie with either LG, Android or both. Even just turning up the air conditioning fan in my car would greatly reduce the system's ability to correctly recognize my commands – more than once I dictated a text that Wear transformed into complete nonsense and then sent to the completely wrong contact before I had a chance to cancel. There's at least one architect in Wisconsin that I've met in person only once who is probably still wondering why I offered to bring home some sushi for him from New Mexico.

Wear didn't quite hear this command correctly (it should be "Gear live")
Wear didn't quite hear this command correctly (it should be "Gear live")

Finally, and I know I'm getting picky here, but how about some pinch to zoom capability in Maps and other apps? That tiny image displaying my full route when navigating isn't of much use.

More battery life

Plain and simple. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that a device with a screen that stays on most of the time wouldn't last much more than a day per charge, but I found it jarring. The watch screen can be set to turn off when idle, but I found the extra step of waking it up to be a pain that partially defeats the purpose of a watch in the first place.

I did easily get into the routine of nightly charging, but the proprietary charger on the G Watch was a little bulky and easy to forget when on the go. So, while it's not a deal breaker, the endless pursuit of the holy grail of better batteries applies to smartwatches too.

The upcoming Moto 360
The upcoming Moto 360

More watches

Let's see that Moto 360, already! LG's half-hearted design of the G Watch and Samsung's only slightly better Gear Live watch are not the devices that will ignite a wearable revolution. Ordinary consumers will get more value and satisfaction out of a Wear watch than they currently realize, but they'll never be willing to give it a try without a selection of watches that bring a little more style and feel a little less like strapping a tiny computer screen on your wrist.

For more, check out our full reviews of Android Wear, the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live.

View gallery - 28 images
4 comments
4 comments
SIMSIM
Regarding battery life, I wonder why, none of the manufacturers has used the watch strap as chain of batteries. This approach will have at least the following benefits: 1- More batteries, more battery life 2- More sleek and thin look of the watch, which is the whole purpose of wearable electronic gear 3- Batteries will be external (strap), which has a raft of benefits such as: a. Better heat dissipation during excessive use b. Better safety and comfort c. Better battery and watch life d. Since the watch will be thinner, this leaves more space to add hardware
Marianne Suesli
Well, first of all, I'd like to see a flexible band, NOT a watch,second I'd want health apps on it, like heart monitor, pulse meter, sugar level...third, I'd prefer a stand-alone device with appropriate battery life.
chris49
That's a nice thought, however it would have to be one cell as daisy chaining batteries together either increases voltage, or amperage.
Mel Tisdale
If you need to wear your glasses to read it, then it is a waste of time because it is going to exclude a large number of the population, simply because it is a pain when you are out and about to keep putting your glasses on to read things.
SIMSIM's idea of a battery strap would work, though would be vulnerable to losing data if one of the connections fails, even temporarily (I assume that there isn't much capacitance on the supply). The batteries could be linked in parallel at the correct voltage and would only supply the amps demanded, hence the improvement in battery life.
We really need to decide what we are going to do about the distraction these wearable devices (as a category) will cause to drivers. The danger is that we will go down the autonomous vehicle route until we kill someone and then throw out the baby with the bathwater, when so much of that technology can be appropriated as driver assistance, which would make room for people to fiddle with their wearable smart whatevers whilst maintaining sufficient attention to what the car is doing under their control to ensure the safety of all.
If we let things continue as they are, there are going to be a lot of lives and licences lost, until the politicians catch up with reality and study the problem - with an open mouth, as usual. What we will get then will be reactionary and heaven help us, look at the zero tolerance on drug driving - 28 days to clear the system after smoking pot! Prohibition by the back door, but shush! We are not supposed to notice.