Gadgetory

there's a new wave of Android wear watches coming out this fall and they're going to have a new trick they're going to work with the iPhone that means the Apple watch is going to have a lot more competition pretty soon but the big question is how much can Google's watches do when they're paired with iOS we went to Google's headquarters to find out today or announcing that we are bringing Android wear to iOS so if you have an iPhone you can also use these watches and so for the newest watches that have come out so LG watch urbane and aces then watch too and Huawei watch and I'll build new watches I'll be coming out before the end of the year and in the future you'll be able to take those and out of the box you'll be able to pair it with an iPhone and you still still get your favorite features so things like notifications Google now voice searches you can have all of that functionality and you know watch faces even and you can use it with your watch and so we're really excited about that I actually got a chance to set up Android wear with my own iPhone and the set up was actually really simple you just download the Android wear app from the app store installed on your phone pair it with an Android wear watch and you're done but Google can't dig down deep into the bones of iOS with the Apple watch can and that introduces some complications Google actually managed to work around a lot of them especially with notifications that the problem is there are a few things that the Android wear app just can't do with iOS when you have notifications that are showing up on your watch we actually think of it as simplifying your life like we don't want your life to feel overburdened or more complicated because you have these notifications in fact the fact that you can get them with right on your wrist is really convenient and furthermore the way we've done this if you get the notification on your watch you know for notifications that would have buzzed your iPhone we buzzed your wrist for notifications I would not have vibrated your iPhone we don't vibrate your wrist we make sure to respect those kinds of notification settings furthermore if you get a notification on your wrist and you swipe to dismiss it and dismisses it on your iPhone as well and so this is true across Android wear with Android phones and everywhere with iPhones in this first release you won't be possible to you won't be able to install third-party apps onto the watch for Android wear watches however and all the things I talked through in terms of notifications fitness tracking voice searches Google now we also have some you know first party applications that Google has built that are included on the watch things like a weather app a Translate app the Translate app actually lets you flip over your watch so that the other person can see the translation those kinds of things are built in and those will work out it locks so there is one weird thing about voice search which is that when you do it it opens up in an in-app browser inside the Android wear app that's because Android wear can't talk to all the other apps on the iPhone but it can talk to the Google Apps which means that calendar and Gmail can give you rich notifications and you also get Google now cards so all told Google's done a surprisingly good job fitting in a lot of features into Android wear with the iPhone I didn't really expect them to be able to pull off it does way more than the pebble cam with iOS unfortunately it can't do quite as much as the Apple watch but Google thinks it has an ace up its sleeve well a watch and that's it there's going to be a lot of different styles of Android wear watch is coming very very soon whereas the Apple watch just basically has the one for a lot of people that first impression matters a lot in terms of what the thing looks like how it feels the overall shape the overall style the materials and so we just want to give people that choice because we think smartwatches are really useful like I really think people like these watches at launch Android wear is only going to work with a few watches with the iPhone the quali watch the Asus then watch - and the LG watch urbane but a lot more coming very very soon and that's going to mean a lot of competition for the Apple watch they might not be able to imagine on features but they can definitely be competitive on the number of styles and on price nobody knows if consumers want that more than they want an Apple watch and so we're just going to have to you know watch and see what happens mmm