Wear OS

The Watch Urbane is essentially LG’s Moto 360. This is going to be a classier Android Wear option, but it comes at a premium. We originally got out hands on the Watch Urbane at MWC 2015, but now we’ve had a chance to get to know it. The Watch Urbane is a great looking watch, but let’s find out if it’s worth your hard-earned cash…

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Wearables are slowly but surely making their way into our daily lives, but one very critical aspect—health—is already helping to bring them mainstream. It’s something that every person is conscious of on a daily basis, and wearable device makers—as evidenced by the countless fitness trackers on the market—want to make it easier to stay on top of exercise, diet, and more. But another aspect of our health, chronic illness, is also big opportunity for wearables to make a difference—and they already are.

About half of all American adults have some kind of chronic illness, and diabetes is one of the most common. With the advent of smartwatches, we all now have quick access to at least one useful stat: our heart rate. But what if those with diabetes could just as easily monitor blood glucose levels? No mainstream smartwatch can monitor this alone, yet, but now one developer has released an app for Android Wear that will plug into a Dexcom CGM (continuous glucose monitor), providing glanceable updates every five minutes on blood glucose levels.

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The disassembly pros at iFixit are at it again, this time tearing down the LG Watch Urbane. LG’s latest entry into the Android Wear space is considered by many to be the fanciest and nicest smartwatch available, but now it looks like we have the authority on device teardowns confirming that it’s also going to be pretty easy to pull apart on the off chance you’ll need to fix it yourself.

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According to a report this morning from Bloomberg, Tag Heuer has settled on a price tag for its upcoming Android Wear-powered Apple Watch competitor. The device is expected to ship for around $1,400, and will launch sometime this fall, specifically “October or November.”
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A poll last weekend on the Android Wear Google+ community asked the following question: “How many apps do you have installed on your watch?” Nearly 700 members responded, and the results took me a bit by surprise.

The headline result was that 77% of respondents—more than 3 out of every 4—have fewer than ten apps installed on their watches. Additionally, the next tier—between ten and twenty apps—contained another 14% of the total, meaning that over 90% of respondents have fewer than 20 apps installed.

In reality, app usage in the Android Wear ecosystem as a whole is probably even lower. This poll was taken among members of an Android Wear community, remember: these are folks who have self-selected as Wear enthusiasts, at least to some degree…
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Google’s head of design, Matias Duarte, recently gave an interview at the Bloomberg Businessweek Design 2015 conference during which he discussed the future of wearables. Duarte, who was wearing an Android Wear device during the interview, compared smartwatches to a variety of other inventions throughout history that have been welcomed by many, but not required.

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Update: With the launch of the Urbane and price drops for the LG G Watch R, Google is no longer selling the LG G Watch on the Google Store.

As expected, LG’s Watch Urbane is now available via the Google Store for $349 in gold and silver variants. The Watch Urbane is similar to the G Watch R, but with a nicer, more high-end design. The device is made entirely out of metal and comes with a single leather band. For the gold model, the leather band is brown, while the silver model includes a black leather band.

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We’ve managed to get our hands on some images of Android Wear 5.1.1 running on the yet-to-be released LG Watch Urbane, and you can find them in gallery below…
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Samsung made a very bold attempt at entering the now-somewhat-established smartwatch space—long before the current market leaders—with the launch of their Galaxy Gear devices, but none of these wearables ever made very much of an impact. And since these devices came several months before Android Wear even existed, they ran Samsung’s proprietary Tizen operating system, which many users have agreed is notoriously clunky and unintuitive.

Now, a developer on the XDA-Developers forum has started work on porting Android Wear to the Galaxy Gear 2, and it looks like the OS is already partially functional…
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Google has announced today that its Keep note-taking app has now received full Android Wear support, letting you view your check lists, photos, and notes straight from your wrist…
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Over the past couple of weeks, much virtual ink has been spilled over the Apple Watch’s first-day pre-order sales. If you missed it, the upshot is that an iOS analytics firm released an estimate that over one million Apple Watches were ordered on that first day, and as we told you, this represents more device sales than Android Wear had in all of 2014.

While many good reasons can be given for this disparity, ranging from Apple’s marketing budget to its reality-distortion field, there are a couple of key aspects to this situation that haven’t often been mentioned…
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LG has announced this evening that its all-metal Watch Urbane will be available later this month on the Google Store in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. In Korea, the device will be available this week with the other countries following.

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Screenshots via <a href="http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/04/21/android-wear-app-v1-1-rolls-out-with-an-updated-look-support-for-cloud-sync-over-wi-fi-and-calendars-for-multiple-accounts-apk-download/">Android Police</a>

After unveiling a handful of new features for Android Wear yesterday, Google this evening has started rolling out an updated version of the Android Wear companion app. The update prepares the app for many of the features revealed by Google yesterday, including WiFi support, wrist gestures, and always-on apps.

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Google this morning announced a huge update to its Android Wear wearable operating system, but we’ve noticed a few things that Google might have forgotten to touch on in its release notes. The company has of course confirmed that WiFi support, always-on screen support for apps, and more features that are on the way. But there are other features, including what looks to be an actual Google Maps app and pop-up notifications, that might be coming to Android Wear as well…
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Update: Various reports have confirmed that certain Android Wear devices, including the LG G Watch and G Watch R as well as the Asus ZenWatch, will not be getting WiFi support.

Android Wear is getting a pretty big update. Over at the official Android blog, Google this morning showed off the latest version of its mobile OS, packing several useful new features including wrist gestures for flicking through cards hands-free, WiFi support to free your watch from needing to be directly connected to your phone, support for quickly drawing emoji replies to messages, always-on screen support in apps, and a lot more…

Niantic Labs is the group within Google that’s behind the famed Ingress augmented reality game, but they have another app that definitely gets a lot less attention. It’s called Field Trip, and it lets you quickly and easily find places of interest around your physical location. You don’t even have to use the app yourself—it runs in the background and automatically lets you know when you’re getting close to “cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you.” Now, the app will send those notifications to your wrist…
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In a recent report, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo noted that Samsung has experienced a better-than-expected market response to its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices. According to the report, Samsung is expected to raise its 2015 shipment guidance by 50 percent from 35-40 million units to 50-55 million units. Kuo says that the increase in expected shipments is mainly due to a strong showing by the Galaxy S6 Edge.

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The latest estimates from Slice Intelligence suggest that Apple sold just under 1 million units of its new smartwatch on the first day or pre-orders, an unsurprising figure considering the fact that the Cupertino company sold 74 million iPhones in Q4 2014. Knowing the number of Apple Watches sold, and assuming it’s correct, we can say with certainty that Apple sold more Apple Watches over the weekend than the combined various OEMs (LG, Samsung, etc.) shipped Android Wear devices in 2014.

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