The smartwatch game has already taken its flight. Several manufacturers jumped into the bandwagon and released their own models last year. The wearable industry is still in its early stages but you can say it’s established. One of the forerunners in the game is Android Wear as the platform used by most brands. It makes more sense to use it since there are more Android phones available everywhere.
The Android team has just rolled out an update to the wearable OS. After adding Wrist Gestures, here comes another important release that brings voice actions and new gestures. We’re guessing this is related to what a Huawei Watch owner received earlier last month who shared with the Reddit community the test build that activated the wearable’s speaker. That was obviously just the beta version. Today, the tech giant is making it available for all Android Wear devices. Roll out will happen in the next few days and weeks so don’t be impatient to receive the improvements.
The updated Android Wear now adds speaker support so you can listen to messages and make calls. It used to be just alerts and notifications that you’ve got a new message or there’s an incoming call. Now, you can have any message “read”. Making calls is possible over Bluetooth connectivity. It’s like turning your watch into a Bluetooth headset, only this time, you’d be speaking to a wearable device. One perfect example of an app that allows such function is Glide. Only a few models have speaker though. Your best bet would be the ASUS ZenWatch 2 (49mm) and the Huawei Watch.
You can also send messages using your voice with several apps: Google Hangouts,WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Viber, and Nextplus. Saying “OK Google, send a Viber message to Sundar Pichai: Android is cool.”, would be enough to get your wearable working.
New gestures have been added as well. If you may remember, Google added the ‘Wrist Gestures’ control feature back in November. The latest update brings new actions like push, lift, or shake to open a card, bring up apps, or return to your watch face screen.
Some of the wrist gestures you can do according to the Android Wear team include:
• Scrolling through cards (see first card, scroll to next, scroll back)
• Taking action on a card (see more details, take an action, go back)
• From the watch face (open the apps menu, pull down settings)
• Back to the watch face (return to watch face)
SOURCE: Android Official Blog
