Google says Android Wear will soon gain support for GPS, Bluetooth headsets & third-party watch faces

In an interview with Cnet today, Android Engineering Director David Singleton confirmed that upcoming updates for the Android Wear platform will include official support for GPS, Bluetooth headsets and third-party watch faces:

Alongside that, we’re introducing GPS support for the platform. So that’s obviously only for devices that have the GPS hardware. But we’re excited about those two features together because it unlocks a whole set of new use cases… If you’re someone who likes to go for a run, it might be convenient to be able to leave your phone at home. So you can start recording your track with GPS on the watch. You can throw on some music and have a really enjoyable run. And when you come back home, everything will be synced up with the apps running on your phone.

Singleton noted that developers have already found ways to build and distribute third-party watch faces for Android Wear devices, but Google plans to soon release officially support that will let developers offer watch faces for download on the Google Play store. “It’s actually kind of interesting because we haven’t yet launched the API for that, but we’ve already seen tremendous innovation from some third parties who have been able to figure out how to do some of this on their own. And we’ve already seen excitement for building watch faces that allow you to express a bit of your own personal style, or really help you work in specific things you might be doing.”

There’s no specific timeframe on when you can expect the updates, but Singleton said there are multiple updates coming before the end of the year with one this week bringing an improved “navigation experience and some of the voice action experience.”