Gadgetory

we're officially in the dawn of an entirely new ecosystem and it lives on our wrists androidwear there's no doubt all of the major manufacturers are going to be getting in on the Android wear train and for the last couple weeks I've been enjoying it on LG's own wearable hey it's Josh regard from Android authority and this is the LG G watch we're going to be seeing a number of different ticks on the Android wearable whether may be square or round it but LG decided to keep things pretty simple almost utilitarian really a square face is surrounded by a pretty sizable bezel all around it is constructed of plastic - the glass for the screen there's a noticeable amount of weight to the unit itself but that's to be expected of a watch that holds a considerable amount of power underneath the surface up top and on the bottom are the areas where you can insert pins for whatever bands you decide to use even if they aren't the ones that come with it but it's important to note you shouldn't be using a cup for it the way that I used to with my pebble this is because the back of the unit has the charging pins that sits squarely on the charging dock so you don't want to be covering that up with no logos or buttons anywhere this watch depends entirely on touch inputs and when you run out of battery it simply turns back on when it gets enough juice from the charging dock when sitting on your wrist the LG G watch sits pretty comfortably despite there being no curve on the back but after that it's pretty minimalistic Lian in the most simplistic way I can put it a screen that's strapped to your wrist one compared to its other Android wear brethren the LG G watch could be considered the most basic but that can be as much of a plus for users as it might be a minus for others of course the screen is what matters most here especially in the case of the G watch because it doesn't have any other methods of input a one point six five inch IPS screen comes with a 280 by 280 resolution which sounds pretty small but remember that this is a watch we're talking about here nonetheless its colors are adequate enough and do justice to what you would end up seeing throughout from cards to maybe the occasional photo if you so choose to view them I've been hearing a lot about outdoor viewing and while it certainly doesn't look great when the Sun directly bears down on the screen what is it that we do anyway when that happens to our regular watches we shade it with our other hand or move away from the direction of the Sun and when done in this matter it's that hard at all to see what you're looking at as far as touch sensitivity goes I haven't had any problems with it thus far we aren't looking at any multi-touch functions in Android wear but taps and swipes are registered fine throughout getting among cards and tapping screens the trigger to trigger functions work as well as they should so when you aren't willing to use your voice the screen does the job just fine performance is handled by a Snapdragon 400 chipset and finally 512 megabytes of RAM for how seemingly simplistic the Android wear operating system should feel it came as no surprise that lag was minimal navigation looks nice and smooth and since multitasking isn't really necessarily a thing traditionally with this Android ecosystem that wasn't much here to bog down the system while I did experience the need to restart the watch a few times in my usage it came primarily after certain new third-party applications kind of crapped out it's more about the programming bugs rather than the core functions which all worked a treat voice recognition is a breeze but it is worth mentioning that if you are using Wi-Fi on your smart phone that it is connected to you might experience a bit of a delay I always got immediate results when sticking to 4G on my smart phone and yes Android wear does mean that you need an Android smartphone for it to work making it a required part of the hardware aspects connections via bluetooth create the bridge between the wearable and your phone and all communication occurs as such after that you're not looking at much more than the microphone for voice recognition which works expectedly well the sensors for pedometer and waking capabilities and the vibration motor inside the vibration motor is something that I kind of take a little bit of exception to because to be honest it's just not all that strong I would really like it to really shake on my wrist so I have definitely confirmation that my notifications are rolling in everything is encased in an IP certified body which means that you can let the G watch get wet and you won't have any problems therein but water does register touches on the screen which could cause some problems for those of you who let's say shower with your watches on and as far as battery life goes it should be expected already that battery life on a screen that is strapped to your wrist probably doesn't bring a whole lot of longevity but after making a couple of smart decisions I found that you can really eke out the most from the LG G watch for one thing don't let the screen be on all the time and when you don't need it to go off like when you're sleeping you the watch by swiping down from the top doing this can get you a day and a half to two days which is actually really nice and it's also a big plus that the G watch charges pretty quickly you can get it charged in about an hour resting on the included charging dock and finally in software we find the true Android wear but it's important to remember one thing this is a system still in its infancy and what we see now can drastically change in even the near future which is why it's great that this is already pretty good to begin with so basically Android wear is a notification hub the notifications that you get on your phone appear on your watch in the form of Google now like cards that you can swipe through swipe over to the right and you'll find more functions in a number of different applications like for hangouts you can dictate responses to messages and for email you can archive or delete messages initializing any installed applications requires you to either say ok Google or tap on the watch face which can be customized with a number of built in or installed replacements if you're familiar with voice commands on Google now you will know how to get around an Android wear say anything from playing specific music to start a timer to remind me to do something later and it will perform the said task according to the app that you have listed out in the wear application found on your smart phone but it's when you start to think outside that box that things become pretty interesting and if you look in the Play Store you can find plenty of examples already all the cooks for example will set up a shopping list on the watch for any recipes that you want to put together Evernote gives you pretty easy access to your recent notes and your to-do lists and RunKeeper can display your stats on your watch while you're trying to break your PR now these are only a few of the applications that you can find in the Android wear specific section of the Play Store that is accessible from the Android wear app but there are so many more applications and functions that you can unlock if you dig deeper into the Google Play Store already I have a new watch space that allowed me to select my own background a game that I can play when I don't have much else to do and an application that allows me to trigger tasks or actions easily it's really just a little bad things you notice and very small ones like the small annoyance of having to swipe right to change the songs playing or the pretty obvious in accuracy of the pedometer app or the instances when you swipe cards away that you can't easily get back but those are really just small gripes in a much larger picture that altogether creates an exciting future for wearable tech already there are developers hard at work in just the previous week when this watch was released looking to perfected their own apps and with more coming on the horizon Android wears only direction to go is up the LGG watch is popping up in multiple outlets but can be found on the Play Store for two hundred and twenty nine dollars it's obvious competitors are the currently unreleased Moto 360 and its main competitor the Samsung gear live that comes in at 199 dollars for a little less money the gear life brings a different design that some might like a heartrate monitor and a pleasing AMOLED screen so those might be factors that sway you away from the minimalism that is the LG G watch other smartwatches available boast their own operating systems like the Samsung gear line with Tizen or the pebble the latter of which I will be doing a full comparison with soon and so there you have it the LG G watch our smartwatches for everyone honestly no even watches on their own are not ubiquitous it's far from a requirement in daily life the way a cell phone is let's say and after all it's still tough to define what a SmartWatch really is is it a computer on your wrist or a watch that just so happens to be capable of more I tend to prefer the middle path a SmartWatch is first and foremost a watch that can tell you the time and other really basic information but dig deeper underneath the surface and you'll find functions that complement not only your smartphone life but your daily life in some ways as well do I expect smartwatches to be on everyone's wrist no definitely not for quite a while at least but if you are even remotely interested in having the world not just at your fingertips but always at the ready on your person then Android wear is a wonderful place to start and the LG G watch is the watch that prevents to you Android wear with no frills and no fuss for better or worse in a currently hypothetical world where smartwatches are ubiquitous the LG G watch is most like a swatch pretty simplistic minimalistic but gives you the essentials in a very unassuming way and if anything on the LG G watch being able to consistently perform voice commands always blows my mind away as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the LG gee watch if anything the G watch along with the Samsung gear live which I am reviewing currently and the upcoming moto 360 are great examples of how Android wears off to a pretty good start and we're looking forward to what comes in that ecosystem so keep it into Android authority for that and all the rest of our coverage of Android we're here and beyond keep it tuned teardrop with some likes on our videos because we'd love to see those thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and remember that Android authority is your source for all things Android