Google Prepares Update To Android Wear With Bluetooth, GPS, And Custom Watchface Support

Ahead of the Berlin IFA show this week and a number of Android Wear device announcements, Google is preparing an update to their wearable OS (writes Richard Nieva on CNet). Three major additions are coming, including support for direct BlueTooth connections from the wearable to external devices such as headphones, the addition of code to support GPS hardware, and a common API allowing custom watch faces to be designed and made available through the Google Play store.



These updates should all be available by the end of the year. There will be an update to Android Wear just before IFA, and this should tweak ‘the navigation experience’ (presumably improved turn by turn directions relayed to the Android Wear device while walking) and improvements to the voice recognition software.

LG and Samsung both have Android devices currently on sale, and announced their second devices last week (the LG G Watch R and the Samsung Gear S). Motorola’s Moto 360 featuring the circular UI should get a commercial release date announced by the end of the week, and there is an expectation that September will see Android Wear devices announced by Acer, Asus, HTC, and Sony.

It’s unlikely that smartwatches are going to be an instant money spinner for any manufacturer. I don’t think that’s the goal in these early moments of the smartwatch ecosystem. Having proved their worth to the geekerati, it’s time to work on a vision that consumers can buy into. By providing a common platform Google is hoping to pull the same trick with on the wrist as they did with the mobile phone, and become the common operating system choice across a wide range of devices.

Manufacturers can pass over much of the heavy development work to Google, and in exchange get to experiment in the smartwatch space without their R&D teams reinventing the OS wheel, safe in the knowledge that their watch will be compatible over the Android smartphone platform. Yes, it hands a lot of indirect control to Google, but attempting to go it alone with a smartwatch involves a much larger investment in areas such as software development, certification, and developer outreach programs.

That might be fine for the tech-community focused Pebble team, but it’s perversely out the reach of many mainstream manufacturer’s smartwatch department.

And there is the elephant in the room of Apple’s iWatch. Android Wear provides some safety in numbers against the expected hardware from Cupertino.

Nevertheless, smartwatches are a new category that is still waiting for a major player to come up and establish a vision that consumers can buy into. Google has set out their thoughts, and we’re about to see what the manufacturers can add.

Asus adds Zen to the Android Wear smartwatch

Promises, promises. Asus went into this year's IFA show in Berlin with the immodest pledge of revealing the best looking Android Wear smartwatch to date. Featuring a curved 2.5D design on the front and a stainless cover on the back, its newly announced ZenWatch emphasizes style above all else. Its price also isn't bad, coming in at 199 euros, and it has a set of high-quality internal components, too — including a 1.6-inch AMOLED display, 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM, and the same Qualcomm processor as inside the first Android Wear watches. But Asus wants to wow you with its looks, not specs.





A tan leather strap connects an Asus-branded buckle to its chunky and well polished body. Fine detailing like stitching on the strap and exposed screws in the back of the watch are borrowed from the classic watch industry. There's an elegance to the ZenWatch that would work much better if it a smaller device. As it is now, it has the dimensions of big and sporty watches but the smooth finish and style of a more refined device. That stylistic clash undermines Asus' premise of this being the most attractive Android Wear watch — the Moto 360 still seems to have more idiosyncratic character than any of its subsequent competitors.

The software on the ZenWatch is the standard Android Wear, complemented with a couple of added features. There's a "tap tap" function to find your phone, a remote control for your smartphone's camera, and more than a hundred watch faces to choose from. Asus hasn't yet revealed the release date for its first Android Wear smartwatch, but you can see it up close and personal in our photos below.

Sony Announces New SmartWatch 3 And Moves Over To Android Wear

Today Sony announced its new SmartWatch, and did something a lot of people, including some pundits, assumed it would not, namely moving the device to Google GOOGL +1.22%’s Android Wear. Previous versions of its SmartWatch had used a proprietary operating system that, while compatible with non-Sony Android devices, didn’t offer much in the way of app support.

But Sony’s SmartWatch 3 does indeed come pre-loaded with Android Wear, which is Google’s official wearables platform. There are going to be lots of advantages of this to Sony. The company won’t have to develop its own apps – although it will, of course – and it won’t have to tempt developers to learn how to build things for its own platform, with no hope of financial reward. Instead, Sony will be able to leverage the power of Google, and use standard Android Wear apps.



But the company has also realised that it can’t sell smartwatches with similar spec to LG or Samsung’s, without investing some time in making the product unique. So what it has done is included two apps that are designed to add value, and persuade you to give your smartwatch money to it, instead of one of the other firms. The first app is Sony’s famous Walkman branded player. As a music playback app, it perhaps doesn’t add much that isn’t available elsewhere, aside from letting you store music on the watch’s 4GB of internal storage. That also means that you can use the watch as a music player, without needing to carry anything else, besides a Bluetooth headset that is.

The second app is by far the best idea though, it’s called Lifelog, and it’s also installed on the new Sony Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Tablet Z3 Compact. It’s able to watch your activity, and because Sony’s smartwatch has GPS built-in, you can head out for a run, track your distance, route and other metrics without having to drag your phone with you. The Walkman music player, when paired with Bluetooth headphones also comes into play here, if you can’t run without a soundtrack.

Add in to these added value apps the fact that the Sony SmartWatch 3 is waterproof, and can be left submerged in water for 30 minutes, then you’re left with a device that has real selling points over its rivals. It’s similarly priced too, at around 230 Euros (£190 or $300).

LG is all set to launch the LG G Watch R at IFA 2014 in Berlin

With the Motorola Moto 360 expected to be officially launched on September 4, 2014, LG will be coming out with a round smartwatch of its own with the LG G Watch R. The LG G Watch R will be officially unveiled a week after the Moto 360 launch.

Unlike the Motorola Moto 360, the LG G Watch R comes in a full circle design and is considered better since it looks more like a piece of jewelry rather than a smartwatch. At first, the LG Watch R was believed to be something that would replace the existing G Watch. But as it turned out, the LG G Watch R is actually pegged as the latest member for LG’s Android Wear roster.

Design-wise, many feel that the LG G Watch R is a better version when you talk about the rounded design pitch. The Moto 360 is not actually entirely round with the screen being cuts off by a horizontal gap near the bottom portion.

For now, the best you can tell from the LG G Watch R is through the teaser video that they had released. No further details or specifics are available for now aside from the fact that it would run on Android Wear and that it will have buttons on the side.

Though the announcement of the LG G Watch R does somehow spoil the coming of the Moto 360, its popularity could now come with a time constraint, especially once LG officially announces its own bet next week.

The LG G Watch R is expected to be announced at the IFA 2014 electronics trade show in Berlin which could further shed off some more specific details that many would want to find out.

How to Factory Reset your Samsung Gear Live Android Wear SmartWatch

Do you want to Factory Reset your Samsung Gear Live Smartwatch? This can be either because you had a bad flash, you installed an app and now things just aren't right, or because it's just slowing down in general. There are many reasons to factory reset your device. The steps are quick and easy, but they are unique. The button combinations are different than most other devices because there really is only one button.

Quick review: Spice Smart Pulse M9010

Right of the bat, the Spice Smart Pulse M9010 smartwatch isn’t something that you can’t do without, but it does provide a glimpse of what local vendors in India are up to as far as wearable technology goes.

We check out the Spice Smart Pulse M9010 to provide you with a quick review based on the specifications.

Specification Overview

Component	Value
Display Size	1.6-inch screen; 320 x 240p resolution
Software	Java
Camera	VGA
Onboard Storage	256KB
Expandable Storage	8GB (microSD card)
Battery	420mAh
Dual SIM	1 Normal + 1 micro
Connectivity	2G, Bluetooth

Design, Build & Display

The first thing that you will notice about the Smart Pulse M9010 is that it is made out of plastic. What we observed was that Spice has tried to give it a metallic kind of finish by giving it a metallic texture and even tried to top it with industrial design screws, but it has more or less failed in that aspect. To add a little spice to the mix, Spice is even offering two extra straps.

The Smart Pulse is squarish in design with rounded corners and within that is the 1.6-inch display. We will give it to Spice on using a display that provides great brightness and colours in low lighting conditions, but as soon as you wander off in the Sun or a well-lit area, the display gives up and the colours seem to be giving our a smudged or washed off effect.

We are sure you will get a real metallic watch for that price sans the smartwatch capabilities. We will leave it to you to decide – real metal or plastic with metallic finish!

Software & Interface

We would have expected Spice to atleast honour the demand of current youth by powering its smartwatch with Android, but it has definitely failed here again. Java based interface is that last thing that one would and inability to add new apps is definitely a huge deterrent.

The interface will remind you of a feature phone that you would have been using 2-3 years back – if you aren’t still holding onto one right now. Navigation on the Smart Pulse M9010 has to be done through three capacitive keys below the display.

As far as keyboard is concerned – predictable enough – it is tiny. Sending out an SMS may seem to be a daunting task. You can pair the smartwatch with your smartphone for notifications – but they will remain just that – notifications – and you can’t act on them.

If you fancy using Smart Pulse’s VGA camera to shoot pictures, you can do so using a remote capture option beyond the manual controls right through the smartwatch.

You find some prebuilt apps like a file manager, one game, among other things – all in all limited functionality accompanied by tiny controls that really do not appeal a great deal.

Storage

256KB onboard storage is so like 1990s; however, having said that you can have an 8GB microSD card for additional storage on the smartwatch. We are not sure why one would accept 256KB storage and to top if why would one go for 8GB storage on a smartwatch that offers no ability to add new apps.

Battery

The 420mAh battery may not sound too impressive, but given the components of the smartphone, we wouldn’t expect Spice to go overboard and fit the Smart Pulse M9010 with a huge battery. Considering that the display and the OS aren’t too tasking on the battery and with only 2G connectivity option the 420mAh should give you a day on single recharge.

Sound & Video

Onboard speakers are definitely great and the accompanying headphones aren’t impressive either. We wouldn’t recommend listening to songs on this one as you wouldn’t get the feeling you might be looking for from your smartwatch.

You can play videos, but it seems that only onboard camera recorded videos are supported.

Conclusion

An outlay just below ₹4,000 may seem impressive at first and specifically until the Smart Pulse M9010 is still inside the box, but as soon as it is out there is just one feeling we are left with – What!!!

We do not see using the device on a day to day basis and definitely not while going to office or a social gathering as we don’t want people to look at us with strange expressions. Further, attending to phone calls on a gadget slapped onto your wrist isn’t practical enough.

WhatsApp for Android Wear will have you talking to your wrist

With over 500 million active users, WhatsApp probably has more than a few customers sporting Android Wear. Starting today, those folks will be able to read and reply to messages directly from their wrist. The new features are launching somewhat quietly though -- the App's Google Play listing hasn't been updated yet, and the direct link on WhatsApp's website makes no mention of the smartwatch features -- but users who update manually will find a new app installed on their Google Wear device. It's more than a simple notification push, too: users can read stacked conversation messages and even reply to them using voice. The update will probably hit Google's servers soon.

Attopedia for Android Wear brings Wikipedia to your wrist

Having a calculator on your watch used to be an impressive feat, but how about an encyclopedia? A new app called Attopedia makes this possible by bringing Wikipedia to Android Wear. Making the most of a watch’s limited screen real estate, this informative software uses a grid-based interface for fast access to historical and trivial content.

Weighing in at a lean 2.9MB, this free app is now available to download from Google Play. If you’ve recently picked up a new Android Wear-powered smartwatch and frequently visit Wikipedia on your smartphone or tablet, this content-heavy software is definitely worth a go.

Swatch plans fitness-based touch wristwatch, CEO tells paper

Swatch plans to equip its Swatch Touch line of plastic watches with electronic functions to measure personal fitness, in a bid to tap into the market for wearable gadgets, the company’s chief executive told a newspaper.

He made his remarks several days after the firm denied working with Apple (AAPL.O) on a smartwatch project.

“Beginning in 2015, we will integrate fitness functions into Swatch Touch,” Swatch Chief Executive Nick Hayek told Sunday’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung am Sonntag, a Swiss weekly.

“It will remain a watch, but will have all today’s usual functions to monitor physical fitness.”

Swatch has in past rejected partnerships over smartwatches and voiced concern about being reliant on software and applications from other companies. Hayek told the newspaper the company would use its own electronic components to ramp up the Swatch brand Touch.

The Swatch Touch model is a touch-screen wristwatch launched in 2011 with a limited range of functions including time, alarm, chronograph, and date.

Like most Swiss luxury watchmakers Swatch has hesitated to jump on the bandwagon for wearables device with interactive functions. A spokeswoman for Swatch was not immediately available for comment.

LG's Smartwatch Shows Android Wear Operating System Has a Long Way to Go

GOOGLE has a new operating system for wearable devices like smartwatches. It’s called Android Wear and it works like a miniature version of an Android phone on your wrist.




One day, it will do a lot of things, from telling your Nest Thermostat (also made by Google) to turn up the heat because you are on your way home to reminding your television to record a baseball game. It offers a glimpse of a smartwatch future — useful and integrated with your entire digital life.

But that’s the rosy future and this, sadly, is the half-baked now. Although Android Wear is simple and familiar for Android users to operate, its overall incompleteness make it a must-have only for the truly enthusiastic tech fan.

I tried Android Wear on the $230 LG G Watch, one of two smartwatches that run the operating system. The other is the Samsung Gear Live, which costs $200.

The LG G Watch does little to elevate the style and wearability of smartwatches.

It’s a beefy, indelicate package even though LG is trying to make the watch seem more high-fashion and possibly even appealing to women.

The watch is available with either a black band or a white band with gold accents, and you can change out its strap. The white band looks nicer in photos, but no band can diminish the sheer size of the big square watch face or its inorganic rectangular shape.

I got the black-on-black version, which looks a bit like one of the house-arrest monitoring devices you’d wear on an ankle.

The LG G Watch has no buttons, other than a reset button on the back. You operate it with taps and gestures on its 1.6-inch screen. To power it on, you place it on a bulky external charger. To start using it, you download the free Android Wear app to your smartphone (Android only) and match it to the watch using Bluetooth.

It is easy to pair the watch with the phone.

The Android Wear app feels unfinished, however.

It has a simple interface, but feels as if it were meant for app developers rather than consumers.

For example, the settings screen includes an option for “Debugging over Bluetooth.”

When you’re pairing with a new device, one option is, “Pair with emulator.” And one of the two separate settings menus includes an option called Demo Cards that just sends examples of Android Wear features to the watch — fake package tracking notifications, restaurant reservations, boarding passes and so on.

Android Wear seems still in the experimental stage, but this app is not labeled a beta.

In fact, when I mentioned these odd features, an Android Wear product manager seemed surprised they were in the app at all. By the time you read this, they could be gone.

He said Demo Cards, though, was intentionally included to show what’s possible with Android Wear. It is a long list that includes traffic, weather and sports scores, as well as boarding passes, flight status and coming reservations and calendar appointments.

All those notifications are courtesy of Google Now, the digital assistant that scans your email, search history and location history to offer information it thinks you need throughout the day.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

I’m a fan of Google Now, but it has shortcomings. For one thing, all your scheduling emails have to go to the same email address — the one you’re using for Google Now. So if you book a flight for business and send the confirmation to your work address, it might not get tracked.

Also, notifications appear inconsistently, even for things like incoming email.

That said, having Google Now notifications on your Android Wear device puts it well ahead of other smartwatches.

It is rich and usually has useful information. And the notifications are subtle: Information cards simply appear, without beeping or buzzing. The same is true for notifications about tweets or Facebook updates.

The watch buzzes gently when you get new email or texts, and sounds like a ringing phone when someone is calling.

But you can disable alerts for emails, and the notifications for texts and calls are useful.

The watch interface is simple: Just swipe left, right, up or down for more information, to get rid of cards or to access more features. And voice controls are a major benefit.

You can use your voice to initiate text or email messages, open apps and ask for Google Now information. For example, you can tap the watch and say “My reservations” to see coming appointments.

Voice controls depend on individual apps. LG, the maker of the LG G Watch, hasn’t updated its text message app on the LG G3 smartphone to support voice controls on Android Wear, so you can’t use your voice to respond to text messages that show up on the watch. But it works reliably with Google products: You can speak responses to Google Hangouts (Google’s app for messaging and videoconferencing) or incoming mail on a Google account.

And the voice recognition on the LG G Watch is shaky. Composing texts and emails is frustrating, and when a sentence was too long or complicated, the watch simply gave me a “disconnected” error.

Google wouldn’t provide an exact count of available apps, but said most Android apps could do basic notifications through the watch. The Android Wear app links to a curated list of about 40 apps with more advanced features for Android Wear.

But these also have a way to go before they’re truly useful. I use an app called Eat24 to order restaurant delivery.

In Android Wear, the app only lets you reorder the last thing you got. And it’s hard to tell what you’re doing: I accidentally ordered $45 worth of Indian food and had to call customer support to cancel.

Not all your daily apps may be available, either. There’s no Uber app, so I installed Lyft. On the watch, you can say, “O.K., Google, call a car.” But be warned: The next thing you know, a car is on the way.

The Lyft app works with one tap on the phone, and there is no confirmation screen.

Using your voice and a wristwatch to call a car to your precise location is both futuristic and really superconvenient. Android Wear presents a vision of a legitimately useful wearable future.

One thing to watch for is the intriguing Moto 360, by Motorola Mobility (which Google is in the process of selling to Lenovo), which is supposed to arrive “later this summer,” according to Google.

It will also run Android Wear and has an attractive, round watch face.

But right now, there are a few too many kinks for me to recommend Android Wear to anyone but hard-core tech enthusiasts. And that’s fine: It seems Google isn’t quite ready, either.

The new Android Wear smartwatches already have their first game

You can finally play a game while making the world think you’re merely checking the time … for 15 minutes straight.

Developer Unit9 Games just released Swip3 on the Google Play app market, and it’s the first game designed for Android Wear smartwatches. These web-connected, touchscreen timepieces from companies like Motorola and Samsung enable you to interact with your email while getting updates and notifications from your calendar or social networks. Swip3 isn’t about checking the temperature or getting quick access to your text messages. Instead, it has you flicking and gesturing with your finger to move around a 5-by-5 playfield filled with different colored blocks. As you might expect, once you connect three or more like-colored blocks, they disappear and you get points. It’s out now for $1.69, and it is also playable on smartphones and tablets. Unit9 also has a version on the Web that you can try. Players spent $16 billion on mobile games last year, which made that the top app category for revenue. It’s possible games could make a lot on touchscreen watches as well — wearables are already pegged to be a $3 billion to $5 billion market.

But we’re all here because we want to experience the future, and that means playing games on our wrists. You’re probably wondering how something like that works, so check out the trailer below to get a glimpse of Swip3 in action on a number of different Android Wear smartwatches:

“We started this project after being impressed by the technology in the Android Wear,” Unit9 business development manager Steve Brown told GamesBeat. “We develop mobile games in Unity and wondered if the technology could also be used on the Wear.”

The team found out that getting a Unity game up and running on a Wear device wouldn’t require a ton of extra work, and so it started to focus on designing something that would make sense on your wrist.

Swip3 is a simple game that looks clean and uncluttered. That is not by accident.

“We knew we had to make the gameplay simple but addictive due to the constraints of the device,” said Brown. “The game itself is designed so it fits in the tiny screen of a watch and all you have to do is simply swipe your Android Wear with your finger to play. At any point all the user has to do is make a choice: left, down, up or right. And it’s not always obvious which is the best choice.”

Smartwatches are still a fairly new category. Google revealed its big Android Wear initiative at its I/O developer conference in June. The company is hoping to do for smartwatches what Android proper did for smartphones. Rumors suggest Apple is also working on a smartwatch of its own, but the company hasn’t announced anything yet.

With games dominating the app market on both iOS and Android, it isn’t a surprise that a developer is already coming to the scene with a game for smartwatches. Now we can find out if anyone cares about gaming on a watch or whether most will just stick to playing Candy Crush Saga on their smartphone.

LG launches G Watch smartwatch running on Android Wear

Along with the LG G3 India launch, LG also also unveiled its G Watch smartwatch, priced at Rs 15,000. 

The watch has a 1.65-inch display and features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 processor and has an internal memory of 4 GB with a 512MB RAM. The dust and water resistant watch sports the Android Wear OS and has a 400 mAh battery.

There is a discount of Rs 5,000 on the LG G Watch when bought along with the G3. 



The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live are the first Android wear smartwatches to go on sale.

LG G Watch is compatible with a wide range of Android smartphones and will present relevant information to users just when they need it or whenever they say "OK Google" to ask questions or to get their work done.

This is LG's fourth device in close collaboration with Google following the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and the LG G Pad 8.3 Google Play Edition.

LG G Watch has an always-on display. It shows an on-time notification, and raising the watch turns it from black and white to full colour. Users can swipe up and down to navigate between notifications, and swipe horizontally to get to details and actions. Users can select the watch face too. They can simply press and hold to choose which watch time face they want. Also, when a user dismisses a notification on the watch, is also disappears from the phone.

Setting a "do-not-disturb" mode is a swipe away. Just swipe down on the watch to set the DND mode. The watch has a daily step counter and a step-count history for the week. 

The Best Android Wear Smartwatch Apps So Far

 

Android Wear smartwatches do a good job of delivering notifications and other alerts to your wrist, but the fun really starts when you start downloading apps that add additional functionality. Although the selection of Android Wear apps is small for now, there are already some pretty compelling options in the Google Play store. You can order food right from your watch, get car service, keep tabs on your fitness and more.

Before you get going, you'll need to download the full apps to your Android phone. The best part is that all of these options are free (so far). You'll need to make sure you've set up an account in each service before you open the apps on the smartwatch. All of these should be seen as companion apps, rather than stand-alone programs. Here are the best Android Wear apps so far.

AlltheCooks

 

AlltheCooks is a social network of sorts, dedicated to those with a love of cooking. Through the phone app you can share and browse recipes. Favorite those dishes that sound promising or create a shopping list for tonight's dinner. The meal planner section can make a busy parent's life much easier. There are forums, messages and news feeds that make for an incredibly robust app.

When it comes to the Android Wear component, it's simple and wonderfully helpful. Once you favorite a recipe you can send it to your watch. From there you can head to the store and leave your phone in your bag. Swipe from right to left to go from the ingredient list to step-by-step directions (each on its own screen).

IFTTT

 

IFTTT, short for If This Then That, connects events into a simple statement that triggers an action. For instance, if the EPA says that the UV Index today will be 6 or 7 today, an Android Wear watch will alert its wearer, reminding him to apply sunscreen. These recipes, as they are called, can range in subject matter from stock prices to Craigslist posts or your calendar. Just imagine never forgetting to call Mom on her birthday again because your watch reminded you. Priceless.

Duolingo

 

The friendly little green bird logo immediately puts you at ease with the daunting idea of learning a new language. And the rest of the app is just as simple. Duolingo works with a combination of images, spoken words and text to teach you Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian and Dutch. The Android Wear extension of this app creates handy flashcards to keep you fresh between lessons.

Lyft

 

 It's raining and you're never going to find a cab. No worries. You don't even have to take your phone from your pocket to order a car. Just tap your Android Wear watch face, swipe up and tap Start. Tap on the Lyft app and your ridesharing car with a fuzzy pink mustache should be arriving at any moment. The Android Wear version of the app will send you notifications about timing and approaching drivers. The service, which offers drivers in personal vehicles, is currently available in 64 U.S. cities (but not New York).

Player FM

 

For podcast junkies, the Player FM app is a definite must-have. Through the app you can discover, download and import audio files from all the big names, including This American Life and RadioLab. New episodes can be saved for later listening as well. When you open the app on your Android Wear smartwatch, you can control the playback; start, stop, next and previous.

Eat24

 

Eat24, the online food delivery service, is giving Seamless and GrubHub a run for your money. The slick mobile app remembers your credit card info, locations and past orders for quick re-ordering. We had trouble finding a delivery restaurant that wasn't an option. With a tap of a finger on an Android Wear smartwatch we instantly re-ordered our previous Chinese food eats. It doesn't get easier than this.

Tinder

 

The hyper-popular dating app Tinder has come to smartwatches -- everything's just smaller. Opening the app instantly recognizes members in your area, allowing you to swipe right or left to like or dislike a prospective single. On each profile you'll see if you know anyone in common, the person's age and first name. Tapping a profile allows you to see whatever description the person may have added. Now the only time you'll need the full smartphone app will be to update your app settings or change your profile.

Runtastic

 

Turning your Android Wear watch into a running partner, the Runtastic app can help you stay fit and trim. Opening the app from the watch activates the program on your phone. You can begin and end workout sessions from your wrist and get a report on how you performed. The app will track distance covered, calories burned and your average pace. You'll also be able to check today's performance against your workout history. Just keep in mind that you'll need to run with your phone, too.

 

Android Wear vs Pebble Steel: Smartwatch Face-Off

Are you ready for a smartwatch? A good one should deliver notifications and handy apps right to your wrist, so you can stare at your phone less and enjoy life more. It should also look like something you want to wear every day. Android Wear is Google’s attempt to make a splash in a still very young category. Sporting color touch screens, voice recognition and the smarts of Google Now, the first two Android Wear watches are the LG G Watch ($229) and the Samsung Gear Live ($199).

But these two devices have a formidable foe in the Pebble Steel ($229), which features a power-sipping, e-paper display along with a legion of apps. Plus, the Steel works with both iOS and Android phones. So should you go the Android Wear route or pick up a Pebble? We put all three devices through an eight-round face-off to help you make the best choice.

Design

The Pebble Steel is one of the most beautiful smartwatches on the market. And that's primarily because it looks more like a watch than a sci-fi movie prop. Its elegantly styled stainless steel body sports polished edges and a subtle Pebble logo. On the Steel’s right side are its up, select and down buttons. On its left side are the watch's back button and charging port.

Measuring 1.5 x 1.4 x 0.4 inches and weighing just 2 ounces, the Steel fits comfortably on both men's and women's wrists. With each watch you buy, Pebble includes both a leather and steel band, so you can mix it up depending on your mood.

For its G Watch, LG took a less-is-more design approach. The watch's rectangular body is a combination of stainless steel and polycarbonate that's attractive in its simplicity. Still, you're unlikely to wear the G Watch to any black-tie events. Unlike the Pebble, there are no buttons on the G Watch. Instead, you navigate solely by its touch screen. Though it's roughly the same size as the Pebble Steel, the 1.8 x 1.5 x 0.39-inch G watch weighs less than the Steel, at just 1.3 ounces. We found the LG's rubberized wristband to be extremely comfortable, though it's not nearly as classy as the Steel's leather strap. 

Samsung's Gear Live is essentially one of the company's Gear 2 Neos running Android Wear. The watch's bold look is certainly an attention grabber, but it's definitely not for everyone. Up front, the Live's touch screen display is surrounded by gaudy chrome accenting.

Measuring 2.2 x 1.5 x 0.35 inches, the Gear Live is a bit large for our taste. Our biggest complaint about design is its wristband. Rather than using a traditional clasp, the Live has two nubs that you press into the strap's holes. It's uncomfortable to put on and doesn't feel nearly as secure as a traditional watchband. 

Winner: Pebble Steel. The Pebble Steel is the only watch of the three that doesn't look like it came from an episode of "The Jetsons," making it the winner of this match by a long shot.

Display

The Pebble Steel's standout feature is its monochromatic e-paper display, which gives the watch a cool retro look. And although it's not nearly as sharp as the screens found on the G Watch and Gear Live, the Pebble's display is incredibly easy to read in direct sunlight. Thanks to its motion-sensitive backlight, you can read the Pebble in the dark without issue. 

Credit: Jeremy Lips/Tom's Guide

Of the three watches, the Gear Live's 1.63-inch, 320 x 320 Super AMOLED display offers the highest resolution. And next to the G Watch, Samsung’s watch produces far more vibrant colors. Both the Gear Live and G Watch feature an always-on display that dims when you're not using it. Unfortunately, the screen is practically impossible to see in direct sunlight when dimmed. And even when the display is active, you'll have to pump up its brightness to the max setting to even see it outdoors.

At 1.65 inches, the LG G Watch packs the largest display of this group. And while the 280 x 280 LCD touch screen is relatively sharp, colors looked paler than those viewed on the Gear Live. Like the Live, though, the G Watch's screen is virtually unreadable when dimmed and viewed in direct sunlight. 

Winner: Pebble Steel. Of the two Android Wear watches, Samsung’s AMOLED screen is better, but only the Pebble Steel’s display is easy to read in sunlight.

Interface

The Pebble Steel's proprietary interface is fairly basic, but fairly easy to use. Up front are your customizable watch faces, which you can scroll through by pressing the up or down button on the watch's right side. Pushing the select button brings you to the watch's home screen. From here you can jump into the watch's music controller, notifications page, Alarms menu, available watch faces, settings and any of the up to eight apps you've downloaded. 

However, the interface requires a lot of button presses to navigate, which can be a chore. We do like that the Steel displays the time in every screen.

Both the Gear Live and G Watch run Google's Android Wear OS, which itself is essentially a modified version of Google Now. You get a series of cards arranged in a vertical list based on what Android Wear thinks is most relevant to you, according to the time of day and your location. Cards include Commute, Flights, Fitness, Keep, Navigation, Next Appointment, Music Control, Reminders and Voice Search.

Android Wear prioritizes notifications for things like texts, instant messages and missed calls, putting those cards above any others. Information for each card is sucked in from Google's various services as well as your phone's notifications drawer.

You navigate Android Wear by swiping up and down between cards. Swiping from right to left shows you more information about the card, while swiping left to right dismisses it. So if you have a Hangouts message, you can swipe to the left to view your conversation history, then swipe again to get to the Reply button. From there you can tap Reply and can either respond by using Google Voice or send a canned reply. If that sounds like a lot of swiping just to send a quick reply, it is.

Dismissing cards clears them from your list entirely, which can be incredibly annoying, especially if you want to view something again. Get rid of the Gmail card, for example, and you won't be able to view the message again. 

Winner: Draw. Neither the Pebble Steel nor Android Wear offers very elegant interfaces, but the Pebble is a bit easier to navigate. That said, we appreciate that Android Wear supports touch input and that it lets you respond to messages.

Notifications

The Pebble Steel receives notifications from a host of sources, including calendar reminders, Facebook, Google Hangouts, Gmail, Google Voice, instant messages, phone calls and texts. Unfortunately, Android phone owners can't receive previews for Outlook messages, though iOS users can. 

Notifications, which cause the Steel to vibrate and light up, can be managed through either the Pebble app on your phone or from the watch itself. From the app you can turn on and off all notifications or third-party notifications, and set whether you receive notifications for incoming calls and texts, calendar reminders, emails and other apps.

One of the best features of the Pebble Steel is that it saves your last 50 notifications no matter what source they came from. So you can pop into the notifications menu on the Steel and scroll through your texts, emails and instant messages. It's an excellent feature and more than enough to make the Steel worth owning. The one downside to the Steel is that you can't reply to any of your notifications from the watch. 

Notifications received by Android Wear light up the watch's display and cause it to vibrate. Notifications include everything that can be displayed in your Android phone's notifications drawer. And while you can receive message previews for everything from Facebook and Twitter to Gmail and even ESPN ScoreCenter, you can't get text message previews unless you tie SMS messages to your Google Hangouts account.

Unfortunately, when you dismiss a notification in Android Wear, you can't get it back. On the plus side, when you dismiss a notification from your smartphone, it also disappears from your watch. What's more, you can reply to certain notifications on your Android Wear device from Gmail and Hangouts using either Google Voice to send a custom response or one of a handful of canned responses. You can't, though, send replies to messages from Facebook, Twitter or even Google+. 

Winner: Pebble Steel. Android Wear can receive notifications for everything from text messages to sports scores, but the Pebble Steel wins this category by virtue of the fact that it saves your last 50 messages. Dismiss a notification in Android Wear and it's gone.

Apps

Pebble has its own curated app store that's accessible through the Pebble smartphone app for iOS and Android. And it's that app store that makes the Pebble Steel so appealing. With roughly 3,200 apps available for download and a lively developer community, you'll likely find almost any app you can think of. 

App categories available in the Pebble App Store include Daily, Games, Health & Fitness, Notifications, Remotes and Tools & Utilities. The app store also provides you with lists of the most popular apps, essentials and top picks to help make finding new apps easier. 

Credit: Jeremy Lips/Tom's Guide

Android Wear has the power of Google's Android community behind it, which should give it a leg up on the Pebble App Store in the long run. For now, though, there are only 35 apps optimized for Android Wear. So far, the biggest apps available for Wear include Pinterest, Maps, Hangouts, IFTTT, Lyft and Runtastic. Other highlights include Evernote Wear, which lets you take voice notes on the go, and Eat24, which lets you order food from your watch.

Winner: Pebble Steel. The Pebble Steel offers more than 3,200 smartwatch and companion apps, which blows away Android Wear's 35 apps. Over time, though, we expect Android Wear to overtake Pebble. 

Fitness

The Pebble Steel doesn't come with any built-in fitness tracking sensors, but instead relies on developers and your smartphone to create fitness apps. Apps like Runtastic and Misfit offer step tracking, calories burned and a host of other information, while letting you control the timers and pace settings from the Pebble. 

Because the Pebble is water-resistant, you can even take it to the pool and track your lap time, or bring it to the beach and wear it while surfing. What's more, many of these apps don't need to be within range of your smartphone to work, so you can leave them safely at home and sync all of your data with your phone later on.

Unlike the Steel, the G Watch has a built-in pedometer that you don't need your smartphone to use. The Gear Live goes a step further by adding a built-in heart rate monitor, which works with any compatible app.

Android Wear's apps library is still extremely small, so there isn't much in terms of fitness options. But it’s nice to see RunKeeper and Runtastic in the Android Wear mix. 

Winner: Android Wear (Gear Live). The Steel benefits from a larger fitness app selection, but with the Samsung Gear Live, you can track your fitness without always having to have your smartphone with you.

Of all of the Pebble's features, its best is easily its lively developer community. Pebble's developers not only offer slick apps, but they also update them regularly. Better still, they've created a smorgasbord of custom watch faces that give your watch its own unique personality. We're talking about everything from Super Mario to the infamous Heisenberg sketch from "Breaking Bad." 

Android Wear is still very much in its infancy, but it already has a killer special feature with its voice search and recognition. Say “OK Google” or tap the face of the G Watch or Gear Live once and you can immediately begin using your voice to search the Web for answers to the universe's most vexing questions, like, "How many top-ten songs does Ke$ha have?" (The answer to that should be none, by the way.)

On the more practical side, you can use your voice to take notes, set reminders, set your alarm, get turn-by-turn directions and more. 

Winner: Android Wear. Pebble's developer community may be strong, but Android Wear's voice functionality lets you control nearly every aspect of your watch as well as perform Web searches.

Battery Life

Not a fan of charging your watch every day? The Pebble Steel has you covered. The Steel's lithium-ion polymer battery is rated to last a whopping five to seven days on a single charge, and based on our experience that's accurate. 

We started using the watch on a Monday with a full charge and by Wednesday the Steel’s battery was only down to 50 percent. And that was with heavy use. The watch's impressive battery life is attributable to its low-power e-ink display.

The LG G Watch packs a 400-mAh battery that LG says will last just a single day on a charge. That means if you're on a business trip and you forget your charger at home, the G Watch turns into nothing more than an expensive bracelet. We used the watch for about eight hours, then left it on while we went to sleep and kept using it for another five hours before it told us that it was down to 20 percent battery life. 

The Gear Live draws its power from a slightly smaller battery than the G Watch. Like the LG, the Samsung offers a day of battery life. We started using the watch early in the morning and it ran until about 10 p.m. before notifying us that it needed to be charged.

Winner: Pebble Steel. No contest here. 

Bottom Line 

After eight rounds of battle, the Pebble Steel comes out on top. The Steel is more stylish than either Android Wear device, it’s much easier for users to read its display outdoors and it offers a wider selection of apps (although you can only store eight at once on the watch). Most important of all, the Steel lasts days longer on a charge.

Android Wear does some things better. The watches have color touch screens, and they deliver not just alerts but also notifications based on what you’re doing and where you’re going. Google’s platform takes full advantage of Google Now’s contextual intelligence. We also appreciate its ability to conduct searches and perform other commands by voice. 

To be fair, Android Wear is brand spanking new, and will likely improve as more apps are added and developers learn how to exploit the platform. But right now the Pebble Steel is the smartwatch that we would buy.