You feel the hype for smartwatches and wrist-based wearables slowly plateauing, but Google is still very much committed to pushing for the maturity of Android Wear as a platform. As more and more people find it close to normal to access their notifications and messages from their wrist, Android Wear is looking to bring newer features to make this interaction more natural.
First up is a new “hands free” way of scrolling through your notification cards. The new action requires you to just flick your wrist outward to advance to the next notification, and flick inward to go back to a previous one. Pretty cool, eh?
Most smartwatch users are always in a bind if they leave their phone behind somewhere, because that means they will not be able to utilize the full functionality of their smartwatch. The new update will alleviate those fears somewhat. New features like offline music, GPS, and Wifi support now make it a bit easier on you if you leave your phone. As long as your phone is on a network – any network, whether cellular data or wifi – and your watch is connected to an available wifi network, the two devices will still be able to play music, show maps, get notifications and data. They will still be able to work together, even if they’re not on the same network.
Another cool feature is to be able to draw an emoji on your watch’s face and have the watch translate that to the closest emoji to send through your messaging apps like SMS, Hangouts, and others. This is especially useful in places where you can’t make a call. Let’s see if a lot of people will appreciate these new features on the Android Wear update the way we do. The update is scheduled to roll out first to the LG Watch Urbane, and then to other devices after that, so watch out.
