Undressing Android Wear: Google Gets Serious on Wearables

Google’s Android Wear marks the company’s official entrance into the wearable market, with watches designed to connect users to their Android devices.

Last week’s Google I/O conference marked the company’s official entrance into the burgeoning wearables market with the Android Wear operating system. Glasses, watches, and fitness bands of all sorts are replete in tech news these days. They may not be for everyone, but wearables offer users a more intimate connection to their compatible smart devices by extending the technology—such as Google Now’s voice recognition program—straight to their wrist. Asking a device to “check Gmail” or “set alarm” has never been easier.

A New Smartwatch Standard?

Android Wear is another hardware landing point for Android L, Google’s upcoming OS update that will overhaul the company’s software for supported smartphones, tablets, television, automobiles, and watches. Android Wear’s smartwatches are developed by hardware end partners and will use a variation of the OS tuned specifically for smartwatches.

Like most smartwatches available today, Android watches will connect users to their Android smartphones to receive notifications, control media playback, monitor heart rate and other fitness measures, and more.

Brains and Good Looks

It was important for Google and their partners to craft wearables that could accentuate personal style and taste, and Android Wear devices seem to hit that mark. “It’s shaping up to be as fashionable as it is functional thanks to support for both round and square watch faces, as seen on the circular Moto 360 and boxy LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live,” TechRadar reports. The result is a clean, easy-to-read user interface, which looks similar to the familiar overlapping card style used in Google Now. The new OS styling lends itself nicely to classic metal and leather bands, as well as more sporty and modern digital watch styles.

Beyond the good looks, this new OS is smart, capable of searching connected devices for compatible apps and displaying them on the watch face. Android watches also feature the same robust voice-recognition support, so you can tell your watch things like “Google. Remind me to call Mom when I get home.”

The hardware partners currently on board to manufacture Android watches include Motorola, LG, and Samsung. The LG G Watch is the first Android Wear watch to hit the market and is available for pre-order.

Which of the new smartwatches has earned your attention?

Image courtesy of Flickr

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