Google Shows Off Android Wear, Its Wearables Initiative

Photo: Google

Google announced Android Wear back in March, but today Google gave us our first big look at the company’s wearable platform.

Android Wear, like Google’s teaser video showed, is designed to give you the information you want at a glance, not buried inside a grid of icons on your smartphone.

It features much of what you’d expect from a smartwatch. The minimalist, always-on interface shows you the most important thing Google knows for you at the time, like the current status of an upcoming flight. Notifications from your phone are pushed to the watch interface, but displayed as a stack of pages you can flip through with a vertical finger swipe. A horizontal swipe gives you more details about the notification, and you can also swipe a notification away. This also removes the notification from your phone. It can show things like your boarding pass for a flight, your hotel address, a restaurant reservation, or the local bus schedule, so you don’t need to waste time pulling out your phone.

By tapping the button on the side of the watch and saying “OK Google,” you can instigate any voice command (much like Glass wearers’ “OK Glass” command). You can reply to messages with a voice command. You can also control music playback with the watch, or check your heartrate during a workout. You can also get turn-by-turn directions right on your watch. To get apps on your watch, like Pinterest or Eat24, you install an app on your phone and the wearable portion is automatically installed and kept up to date on your watch.

Your Android Wear watch also acts as an authenticator for your smartphone. When your Android Wear watch is nearby, you don’t need to unlock your phone with a pin. But when it’s out of range, you’ll need to log into your Android phone normally.

Several companies are already making hardware based on Android Wear, including LG and Motorola. These devices can either have circular or rectangular faces, and they’ll be water resistant.