Android By Russell Holly Mar. 18, 2014 12:28 pm
Throughout the wearable tech race, with smartwatches,*fitness bands, and strange computers to wear on your face, there’s been one constant thought: whoever can deliver an equivalent to Google Now on our wrists first, wins. Now it looks like Google is planning to give Google Now service to anyone willing to play in the company’s sandbox, through the recently announced Android Wear program.
Forget what you know about smartwatches right now. The bulky, blocky notification dumpsters that sit on your wrist or the more evolved versions that beg for you to push a button combination to interact awkwardly with a handful of half-baked apps. You might as well forget they ever existed because the actual smartwatches are on their way. Smartwatches that offer you contextual information relevant to your interests, like fitness stats when you run or real time traffic information as you head out the door to work.
It’s clear that this isn’t ready to launch on existing hardware, and there’s still plenty of questions about hardware quality that needs to be answered, but Google is starting off with a software developer preview to show off what will be possible in these wearable form factors. Google showed off multiple watch concepts with a Google Now style interface that allowed for notifications to still arrive and be interacted with, but it’s clear that they want developers to take these ideas and run with it.
Based on what we’ve seen here, it’s not hard to imagine a smartwatch from Google right around the corner. We’ll likely see it unveiled and explored at Google I/O this year, and there’s a good chance that there will be more than one device for people to look at. Get ready to be excited, you would be smartwatch enthusiasts, the real wearables are on their way.
Update: The watch featured in the image at the top and above is the Moto 360. It will respond to “OK Google” telling you flight status, game scores, and other Google Now-type information. It will be available in Summer 2014.
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Forget what you know about smartwatches right now. The bulky, blocky notification dumpsters that sit on your wrist or the more evolved versions that beg for you to push a button combination to interact awkwardly with a handful of half-baked apps. You might as well forget they ever existed because the actual smartwatches are on their way. Smartwatches that offer you contextual information relevant to your interests, like fitness stats when you run or real time traffic information as you head out the door to work.
It’s clear that this isn’t ready to launch on existing hardware, and there’s still plenty of questions about hardware quality that needs to be answered, but Google is starting off with a software developer preview to show off what will be possible in these wearable form factors. Google showed off multiple watch concepts with a Google Now style interface that allowed for notifications to still arrive and be interacted with, but it’s clear that they want developers to take these ideas and run with it.
Based on what we’ve seen here, it’s not hard to imagine a smartwatch from Google right around the corner. We’ll likely see it unveiled and explored at Google I/O this year, and there’s a good chance that there will be more than one device for people to look at. Get ready to be excited, you would be smartwatch enthusiasts, the real wearables are on their way.
Update: The watch featured in the image at the top and above is the Moto 360. It will respond to “OK Google” telling you flight status, game scores, and other Google Now-type information. It will be available in Summer 2014.
More...
