Android Wear grew really fast in the two years of its existence. Google announced Android Wear 2.0 with a slew of new features, design tweaks and more at the I/O developer conference yesterday. The Android Wear platform has received a significant update since its launch two years back.
With the latest version of Android Wear, smartwatches running it will be completely standalone and won't require a smartphone as a companion. Devices will connect to Wi-Fi networks automatically, and will rely on cellular when you're out and about. The biggest change comes in the design, though. Google released new and enhanced Material Design guidelines for Wear 2.0.
One of the most important additions is the inclusion of three input methods viz, handwriting, smart reply and gesture keyboard. Handwriting keyboard scrolls as you draw letters and numbers with your finger while smart reply includes a set of suggested responses based on the context of a conversation. Finally, there is gesture keyboard that is similar to the Google Keyboard for phones and tablets. Android Wear also gets a notification template with a layout optimized for quick and responsive messaging.
Watchfaces will gain the ability to show data from other apps. In case of fitness improvements, Android Wear now makes it easier to develop apps that use fitness data and detect activity. It gets the Activity Recognition features of Google Fit. Finally, Android Wear apps can now take advantage of the latest Android N features such as Data Saver, Java 8 Lambda support, and emojis.
Android Wear will be available later today as a developer preview. It's only compatible with the LG Watch Urbane Seccond Edition LTE and the Huawei Watch. More watches will be added as part of the Wear 2.0 update later on, like the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live.
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