There may only be two smartwatches in the market (will turn 3 once Motorola launches its Moto 360) running on Android Wear right now, but that hasn’t stopped several apps from adding features to support the platform. Probably this is due to the fact that they expect it to explode in the next few months or years. The new version of Facebook Messenger, v9, now has the capability of replying to your messages by speaking into your smartwatch.
The new version of the FB messenger lets you voice reply to any conversation on the app, if you have a Samsung Gear Live or an LG G3 that is. If you’re on the go and too busy to type out a reply to your FB messages on your smartphone, then all you have to do is have the FB messenger app open on your smartwatch and use the voice reply option. Or if you’re really pressed for time (or are too lazy) but you need to send some kind of reaction, then you can now send a thumbs up through your Android Wear device. Another helpful new feature is the ability to mute notifications on your smartwatch or your mobile device.
Other than the new Android Wear support, there is not much updates for normal mobile users of the FB Messenger app, except for supposed “improvements to make the app faster and more reliable”. Just last week, Facebook announced it is removing the messenger features from the main app, slowly forcing users to migrate to the stand-alone Messenger app if they want to continue using the service.
While the app has seen a lot of improvements from its previous incarnations, there is still a lot of resistance to this major change, since some users just want one Facebook app instead of several separate ones, plus the chat heads can be kind of annoying. If you want to check out what the fuss is about (and if you already have or are planning to buy an Android Wear smartwatch), you can download the Messenger for free from the Google Play Store.
SOURCE: Ian Lake
