by Editor Brian Turner

Android Wear 2 has now launched. The great news is that it is backward compatible with some existing devices. It includes support for Apps that don’t need the connection to your smartphone. For the low down see this link

1. Untethered operation where the watch doesn’t need the smartphone to work.
2. Standalone Apps stream music without the smartphone from the watch.
3. Better Messaging with a QWERTY keyboard on the watch and Avatars.
4. INSIGHT feedback to give you what you need to do after exercise e.g. Rest or work harder.
5. Easier to customise watch faces with extra content called “Complications”.
6. Better user interface for selecting Apps with circular selection of Apps .
   User Interface. Scroll down to get more content consistently instead of getting lost.
7. Better battery life management.
8. Google Assistant. This is coming from the Google Pixel phone. I don’t know the difference between Google Assistant and “OK Google”, I guess it may be better AI and learn your preferences for what you want.
9. 

   

New Wear UI 

The LG watch Sport is the first new watch to get the update but the following existing watches will get the update in the next few days .

1. LG Watch Style.
2. Fossil Q Founder.
3. TAG Heuer Connected.
4. Huawei Watch.
5. ASUS ZenWatch 2.
6. Moto 360

Brian’s view on the launch

Has Google done enough for Android Wear to survive? The question I have is a better user experience, standalone Apps and a few improvements enough to compete with Apple? The quality of the few Google’s Apps for Wear has been awesome (Such as Google fit) but the diversity and quality of the 3rd Apps (Apart from fitness) has been extremely poor. The ecosystem needs a huge increase in quality Apps. I welcome the user experience to select Apps with the “UI wheel” . This is a quick win. I’ll update this blog once I get my update on my Moto 360 2nd gen. Looking forward to it.