Gadgetory

there's a new version of Android wear that does a bunch of clever things but thankfully doesn't over complicate the watch it's actually pretty good but right now it's only available on one watch the LG watch urbane this thing right here and yeah it's huge the urbane is slightly bigger than last year's G watch are with basically the same specs it's way bigger than the Apple watch it's shiny and silver and to me it looks like a cheap watch pretending to be an expensive watch but at $349 it is not a cheap watch some people like the style but I am NOT one of them and if you have small wrists forget it the urbane has a round face and an always-on OLED screen and it does the usual Android SmartWatch things you'd expect it to it easily lasts a full day it accepts spoken commands it plays music over Bluetooth for your workouts it shows you your notifications and Google now cards Android wear is the same on all the watches it's on and so it's the same here except that right now the urbane is the only watch running the newest version of Android so it does a few new things Google isn't sitting still now that the Apple watch is here you could say that these new features are the sort of thing any wearable needs but you can also kind of see how some of them are designed to match apples features it gives you faster access to apps either by tapping the watch face or holding down the side button those apps are getting better too you can start a run or check your heart rate you can record audio and then shop for Gatorade on Amazon you know for the next run it also gives you faster access to a list of recent contacts by swiping over from the main menu it puts your favorites and your most contacted people there but since this is a Google product and Google is terrible at contacts you're gonna see duplicates it lets apps run on the ambient screen so you don't have to activate the watch to see them but only a few apps support this for now like Google keep but we should see maps and more apps support it soon it adds Wi-Fi support so your notifications and voice commands sync over the cloud even if you're not on the same Wi-Fi network as your phone which is really impressive but the new feature that's the most fun is that it lets you draw emoji when you send a text message you literally draw the emoji you want to send on the screen and then Google guesses what it is and gives you a list of options to choose from I I send a lot of poop emoji anyway that's about it did experience some weird crashes and slowdowns but hopefully those will get addressed soon overall it is a really nice update for Android where it keeps things simpler than the Apple watch but it moves Android wear beyond just being a watch with Google now Google says that the update should be coming to every Android wear watch soon but for the moment you really have to like big kind of ostentatious watches to get it because it's only on the LG watch urbane which is big and ostentatious