Items tagged with Android Wear
AI is being integrated into everything from speakers that are placed around your home to smartphones, cars, and wearables today. One of the places that AI assistance can have a big impact on the lives of users is when it comes to health. Wearables running Wear OS and the Apple Watch already can detect early warning signs of very serious health conditions like diabetes. Google is working on something, according to a new rumor, that will take AI-assisted health and fitness to the next level. This system is called Google Coach (known as Project Wooden internally) and it will be more than an exercise tracker and go well beyond what Google Fit currently offers according to reports. Google Coach...
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Google has announced that it has added new features to Google Assistant on Wear OS that will make it more useful for smartwatch users. One of the new features is smart suggestions that allow users to choose from contextually relevant follow-up questions or responses to continue the conversation they start with Google Assistant. When users ask the assistant about the weather, they are shown the weather and can then tap on a suggestion to see the extended forecast for the weekend. Google Assistant can also allow users to hear the answers to their questions. An example is when a user is listening to music on their way to work, they can ask Google Assistant to "tell me about my day." The assistant...
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Earlier this month word was going around that Google might be rebranding its Android Wear wearables operating system to Wear OS. That rebrand has happened and the very first developer preview of the new operating system is now available. There are a couple caveats to this early developer preview of the OS, with the biggest being that Wear OS is only supported on two Huawei smartwatches. The supported devices include the Huawei Watch 2 and Huawei Watch 2 Classic, and this release is in no way geared toward everyday consumers. Google is specifically calling attention to a few features of Wear OS in the developer preview. Google wrote, “To improve app compatibility, Android P has started the...
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It looks as though there are some changes afoot for Google's smartwatch operating system, which has been called Android Wear since its inception three years ago. Android Wear, which is now up to version 2.8, will reportedly soon receive a rebrand to “Wear OS”. According to a redditor named H3x0n that received a pairing notification for his smartwatch, he noticed a new logo along with the Wear OS designation. 9to5Google adds that the notification was sent via Google Play Services, which is currently at version 12.2 (most recent stable release). However, H3x0n is running the newly released Android P Developer Preview, which is running version 12.4 of Google Play Services. With the 12.5...
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Apple Watch And Android Wear Smartwatches Can Detect Early Signs Of Diabetes According To UCSF Study
Many wearable such as the Apple Watch, Android Wear smartwatches, and FitBit bands come with built-in heart rate sensors. While these are useful for gauging the impact of cardio-based workouts, it turns out they can also detect early signs of diabetes with a high level of accuracy, according to a new study by health startup Cardiogram and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The study examined more than 14,000 Apple Watch and Android Wear device owners over the course of several weeks. During that time, Cardiogram collected 200 million heart rate and step count measurements, and used that data to train and validate a deep neural network called DeepHeart that can distinguish between...
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Android Wear, the customized and lightweight version of Google's full-fledged Android platform for smartphones, had fallen a little behind with Google having launched Android 8 (Oreo) several months ago. That just changed, however, as there is a new version of Android Wear that is based on Oreo, and it has already begun rolling out to device makers. As to when consumers will see an update, that is entirely up to each smartwatch manufacturer. Prior to this update, the latest version of Android (2.0) was based on Android 7.0 Nougat. Google began beta testing an Oreo build around a month that initially was only available for LG's Watch Sport. Having presumably squashed any major bugs and polished...
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More often than not, when someone goes out shopping for a smartwatch, they end up purchasing an Apple Watch. That leaves second place up for grabs between Tizen and Android Wear, and for the first time ever the former overtook the latter in market share. According to data collected by Strategy Analytics, Tizen jumped ahead of Android Wear in the first quarter of 2017 to grab a 19 percent share of the smartwatch OS market, edging out Android Wear at 18 percent. Those figures give Samsung reason to feel vindicated in its decision to move away from Android Wear and go all-in with Tizen in the wearables market. That may not have seemed like a smart decision two years ago when Tizen's share of the...
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If you have been intrigued by the smartwatch revolution, but have yet to find a model to suit your higher-end tastes, TAG Heuer might just have you covered. The company's new Connected Modular 45 isn't just beautiful, it's modular (as the name suggests), allowing you to use it as a smartwatch one minute, and as a regular mechanical watch the next. TAG Heuer emphasizes the fact that this watch carries the Swiss Made label, ensuring that fans of higher-end timepieces take it a little more seriously. Still, it's a bold design, especially since its modularity could be seen to some as a gimmick. At a formal function, a Connected Modular 45 owner might choose to replace the smartwatch module with a...
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Is the wearables market in trouble? Motorola seems resigned to abandon the sector, citing subdued interest from consumers. Motorola parent Lenovo said in late 2016 that it doesn’t “see enough pull in the market to put [a new smartwatch] out at this time,” and added “Wearables do not have broad enough appeal for us to continue to build on it year after year.” Well, Google obviously doesn’t feel the same way about wearables, as it today introduced the Android Wear 2.0 platform for smartwatches. Android Wear 2.0 has been a long time coming, and it has been faced with delays, but it looks as though it was all well worth the wait.LG Watch Style Google is making Android Wear a more customizable...
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There are two things Google has to come to grips with. The first is that smartwatches might not be the next big thing, as recent data shows that consumers are more interested in fitness bands than time pieces. And secondly, those who do buy smartwatches end up selecting an Apple Watch way more often than one running Android Wear. Those are the cold, hard facts for Google, and its latest "Magic Minute" campaign probably isn't going to change things. The Magic Minute Project is a marketing campaign designed to bring attention to Android Wear. It consists of one-minute clips showing what is possible in a minute, like rapping 300 words or parkouring nonstop for 60 seconds while maintaining a low...
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When Google launched its Android Wear platform for wearable devices a couple of years ago, HTC was listed among a collection of nearly two dozen partners said to be working on a smartwatch utilizing the specialty OS. HTC's name still sits on that list, though here we are two and a half years later and the company has yet to announce an Android Wear smartwatch. Will it ever? Newly leaked photos suggests the answer is yes, and perhaps soon.The first rumor that HTC was working on a smartwatch came in 2013, though it was never interested in releasing a gimmicky product. Half a year later, Google brought Android Wear to market, giving HTC a new OS to build its watch around, one that it was excited...
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If you’re an owner of an Android Wear-based smartwatch and have been eager to get your hands on the final release of Android Wear 2.0, the wait is going to be a little bit longer. Google announced today that its next generation smartwatch operating system has been delayed from fall 2016 to early 2017. So instead of customers being graced with a final release, Google has pushed out Developer Preview 3. Developer Preview 3 contains all the niceties from the previous two releases, but also brings the Play Store to your smartwatch. You can easily browse recommended apps, or perform a more precise search with your voice, the on-screen keyboard, or with the handwriting recognition. “Perhaps the coolest...
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So it seems that Google is probably, almost definitely and most likely working on a pair of Android Wear smartwatches of its own, according to a "reliable source" along with "confirmation of their existence from multiple sources" who spilled the beans to Android Police. On a scale of 1 to 10, the site's confidence level in the information obtained from its sources is a 9. Well alright them.There's a lot of huffing and puffing over the sources and validity of the rumored wearables—several paragraphs, in fact—along with a disclaimer in case it turns out to be hogwash or Google cancels the project. But for now, the story is that Google's building a larger size, sporty model Android Wear smartwatch...
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Sound the alarm and alert the public, Samsung is kicking Android Wear to the curb and rolling exclusively with its own Tizen OS for wearables such as smartwatches! Actually, don't go sounding the alarm and don't alert the public—contrary to what you might have read earlier today, Samsung isn't ditching Android Wear. The clarification from Samsung came after Fast Company cited unnamed executives from the South Korean firm as saying that it wasn't building or planning to develop any Android Wear devices. It seemed like a totally plausible statement considering that Samsung's tapped Tizen for nearly all of its smartwatches, including its most recent addition, the Gear S2. But whatever the executives...
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While other smartwatch operating systems seem to evolve at a somewhat glacial pace (a la watchOS), Google is kicking into overdrive with regards to adding features to Android Wear. The company is continually adding little tweaks and new software features here and there, and this fall will see yet another big revamp with the release of Android Wear 2.0. Google has overhauled the Android Wear UI, making it easier to respond to and take action when notifications come through, and includes a new darker UI color palette that blends in more deftly with smartwatches featuring round displays. Google also updated the watch face picker, making it easier to update the look of your watch at a moment’s notice....
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One of the neat things about Android Wear is that manufacturers have stepped to the plate with different physical designs to suit a variety of style preferences. Android Wear smartwatch owners also have access to a host of watch faces. However, if there's a downside, it's that swapping out wristbands hasn't been as quick and easy as it could be. Google realized this, so it took the bull by the horns and created a new line of watch bands called MODE. Developed in partners with b&nd by Hadley Roma, the new MODE bands feature a simple mechanism with a slide button to snap and swap watch bands with minimal effort. The new standard brings parity with ease of changing out bands on the Apple Watch....
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If you're an Outlook user on Android and also happen to own an Android Wear device, you're in luck -- Microsoft has just released a new update that adds support for smartwatches. At the moment, the update can be snagged from the Google Play store in some areas, but in the event your device isn't pulling down the latest version, you can manually snag the update here. Note that the up-to-date version is 2.1.0 (Google Play currently shows 2.0.57 for us.) According to the folks over at Android Central, Microsoft sums up the update, writing, "This week, we're bringing the best of Outlook to Android Wear. Stop reaching out for your phone, everything is now happening on your watch. Check your Outlook...
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If three's company, we'd say Motorola has gone and made a full-on family out of its Moto 360 smartwatch. Hot on the heels of its second-generation Moto 360 comes the Moto 360 Sport, an Android Wear timepiece designed to compete not with TAG or Sony or Samsung, but with FitBit, Polar, Garmin, and TomTom. The ruggedized or sports smartwatch field is an interesting one. The target market isn't your typical smartwatch buyer. Instead, it's the fitness tracker buyer that a company hopes to upsell to. At $300, the Moto 360 Sport isn't exactly cheap. It's a full $50 cheaper than the Apple Watch Sport but it's $100+ more than a lot of the fitness trackers it's competing with. Now that the...
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Android Wear today is quite a different beast from when it landed nearly two years ago — thankfully, it’s been changed for the better thanks to steady improvements and feature additions that Google has bestowed onto the operating system made for smartwatches. Today, Google is rolling out another big Android Wear update, which is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow at its core. The update brings the ability to send messages with your smartwatch using just your voice. A number of messaging services are supported including WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber and of course Google Hangouts. To send a message, you could for example say, “OK Google, send a Google Hangouts message to Paul: Hey man, answer your phone!”...
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One advantage smartwatches have over their dumb brethren is that when you grow tired of looking at the same timepiece, you can download new backgrounds to freshen things up. So it goes with Android Wear, the custom version of Android built specifically for smartwatches, which just received nine more watch faces.Each of the new watch faces is from an "iconic fashion" designer or brand, including Ted Baker, Melissa Joy Manning, Vivienne Tam, Nicole Miller, Y-3, Mango, Zoe Jordan, Harajuku Kawaii, and ASICS. They all bring a unique flair to the Android Wear world, and best of all, they're free to download.These new watch faces are part of an ongoing effort to add a bit of uptown appeal to Android...
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It looks as though TAG Heuer has a hit on its hands with its Connected Watch. The company announced the Android Wear smartwatch in early November, and it’s priced well above other devices running Google’s wearable operating system, coming in at $1,500. However, that high price tag hasn’t been enough to keep customers away. The Swiss watchmaker announced that it has received over 100,000 orders for the Connected from its various retail partners and subsidiaries. As a result, the company is increasing production from 1,200 units per week to 2,000 units per week. Demand has been so strong that TAG Heuer parent company LVMH will suspend online sales of the Connected until mid-2016, so that it can...
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Well, that was a bust! AT&T just launched the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE smartwatch on its network last week, and Google proudly announced a new update for Android Wear in preparation for the always-connected wearable. However, AT&T and LG have abruptly ceased sales and Verizon Wireless, which was scheduled to offer the device starting today, has canceled the device. So what the heck happened in less than a week for LG to completely withdraw the smartwatch from the market? Well, we’ll let LG explain in its own words: Late in the quality assurance process for the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, our engineers were made aware of a hardware issue which affects the day-to-day functionality...
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