[Wear OS General] hutzdani:
Okay so its been a while since the release of the first Android Wear devices, whats Changed ? Is it Worth It ? Was star trek onto something ?

Android Wear is still in its infancy, and clearly has a LONG way to come.

If your still undecided about getting android wear before the holiday period let me help you make your decision.

I have used both the Moto 360 & Lg's G Watch, so Im ignoring device Specific additions because thats not really anything to do with Android Wear its to do with the supplied hardware so don't expect to hear me talking about screen quality this is SOFTWARE ONLY !

After a summers use of Android Wear i have come to a conclusion that many may find hard to swallow and ill go through my reasons and thoughts lets start with what it does well.

From Now on Android Wear will be : AW

Driving :

It works perfectly in theory for driving, you can "Okay Google" and send a SMS or place a call ( provided it is safe to do so, or via BT in car audio ) Great ! you think but now the problems of reality occur.

If your Travelling to and from work / home e.c.t you may need to send a SMS or place a call to Standard numbers ( Home / Work / Mum / Dad e.c.t ) however asking to call " Joe Blogs *Insert work place name here* " is not always picked up correctly and AW.

The Screen will show a turning loading / thinking icon and do one of two things ( 1 ) Finally work it out but by this time you've given up or have tried again : (2) Sits there thinking and just times out and forces the watch to disconnect from your paired device.

Then you hit the issue of no phone signal and whilst driving you don't have time to check the tiny screen to see if the microphone icon shows that its ready and connected to accept your voice task again your sat there talking to your watch like an idiot.

Now android Wear has no way of telling you without looking that you have signal / Connection / ready to accept a command, so you may aswell have your phone hooked up Via BT audio in your dock and do it all via the stock Google now because its faster and easier to tell if you have reception.

As a Pedestrian :

This is a massive sticking point, you can glance at your watch to see the time (

and there should be a better option for the Date for all watch faces

) and the weather and that's about acceptable in society.

Talking to your watch to send an SMS e.c.t get you some funny looks and personal space, also you don't want the general public to know / hear about whats for dinner and your plans for the working week(end).

This can all be done from your phone and you won't look like you got beamed down by a passing space ship.

However Turn by Turn Navigation on your watch is great ! no longer glued to your phone screen burning up battery time trying to do a 15min walk you have never done before, AW handles this perfectly turn by turn !

Searching :

Google

Android Wear , asking your watch to give you the 5 day forecast for your next holiday destination next week is a no go, your presented with a unreadable card crammed with search results and a swipe option to open it on your phone !? this bemuses me the whole point was to show us fast easy information.

This kind of task is better done on your phone and so are many other common searches like show me the nearest cash machine / Mc Donalds / Navagate to " Cinema e.c.t " this totally renders AW useless !

Asking for weather and time in other places or in your current region is fine as it seems to do these automatically as long as location reporting is activated on your handset.

Asking for anything beyond this well you may as well have used your phone or asked a passer by.

Alarms / Notes / Fitness Tracking :

These Functions work as advertised and as you'd expect on your phone and some even work offline ( Alarms / reminders / notes ), provided your hardware supports fitness tracking you can grab data using 3rd party apps or the soon to be released google FIT, however lots of phones already do this via a pedometer and there for this function is rendered useless because you end up with two sets of data that are quite different from each other ( I have logged 15,000 steps on my watch to find around 8,000 on my handset.

Phone Tasks :

Calling ( apart from the niggles described in the Driving section ) well here is a mess, accepting / declining a call is partly pointless accepting a call forces you to grab your phone and answer, so this option should be removed so you can only decline or view whos calling, I can hear my phone ringing from my pocket so i'll take it out to look if I can.

There is no option to answer a call and force it to be taken via speaker phone so if your doing a two handed task with your phone near by and some one calls you still have to stop, otherwise in situations like driving the accept call function is fine provided you can pass the phone to a passanger or are hooked up via BT audio.

Final Thoughts :

It works great In car provided you have signal and can shout at your wrist simple names and messages, and you don't already have a in car phone cradle set up where you have voice activation enabled - All of this will be super seeded by android auto so having AW for this reason alone is totally negated and you may aswell wait for Android Auto or carry on with your BT set up.

As of above the rest of AW is pretty useless because using AW is best in a car or doing two handed things where you can't stop and answer the phone, basic function is great and it looks nice but well though out functions are lacking and the actual deployment scenarios where its is applicable are far and few between for several reason stated.

Personally its a gimmick, and even for the G Watch's cheap price its still not worth it and i can't see it ever being.

Google's own voice actions on phones far surpasses AW's usefulness.

Possibly in developing markets I can see it being worth an investment for under $80 to pair with an android one device.

With my BT car stereo / Nexus 5 / Nexus 7 / PC computer its a nice luxury but thats about it, it doe snot let me achieve day to day tasks any faster than just having my phone around its just an annoyance.