Wear OS

It wasn’t that long ago that Android Wear got its big update to Android 5.1.1, but now rumors about the next revision of the smartwatch operating system are starting to pop up. According to the well-connected Artem Russakovskii, the Android Wear team is currently cooking up support for watches with built-in speaker hardware, as well as planning to introduce on-watch calling…

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Google has added Taiwan to the list of countries where its Nexus 6 smartphone is available to purchase through the Google Store. It’s also now selling the new LG Watch Urbane Android Wear smartwatch in Japan.
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The Samsung Gear Live was one of the first Android Wear devices to launch (alongside the LG G Watch), but now—almost a year later—the device is no longer available for purchase through the online Google Store. It’s “no longer available for purchase,” according to its product listing…
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Google cares about your health and wants to help you stay in shape, which is why the company today released a set of updates and new features for the Google Fit platform across Android smartphones and Wear watches that make it easier to track your daily progress and fitness goals…

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Following rumors that ASUS could look to release a non-Android Wear device and reports of delays for its next-generation smartwatch, today the company confirmed that the new Asus ZenWatch will arrive early in Q3 and will indeed be running Android.

The news comes from the focustaiwan.tw news channel, which reports the company’s CEO confirmed plans are still on track for the next-gen Asus ZenWatch powered by Android Wear:
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We’ve seen just about anything running on Android Wear at this point—from Minecraft: Pocket Edition, to Flappy Bird, to Windows 95. Today, Corbin Davenport is back with another video, this time showing off another ancient operating system running on the miniature Samsung Gear Live wrist computer. This time, he’s running the Macintosh II’s System 6 (and the emulator he’s using—Mini VMAC II—supports up to version 7.5.5)…
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Google has today released an open source exercise “game sample” to GitHub which utilizes a handful of Android technologies to demonstrate to developers how they can create fun games using Google Fit and Android Wear.

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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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