Google's Android Wear to support Bluetooth headsets, GPS, and third party watch faces
Google says Android Wear about to get even smarter (Q&A) — The search giant hasn't said much about its OS for wearable devices since a demo in June. CNET sat down with two of the project's head engineers to find out what's new.
Context & Ripple Effects
Android Wear has moved fast from concept to shipping hardware this year: Google opened the project with a developer preview in March, Ars Technica called it a 'quantum leap' for the smartwatch category, and by June Samsung was preparing an Android Wear watch unveiled at Google I/O. What was missing was depth — since that June demo Google had said little about where the OS itself was going.
This CNET interview with two of the project's lead engineers fills that gap, and the pickup across eight outlets including BGR, Businessweek, and Ausdroid shows how much attention rides on the answer. The three additions — Bluetooth headset support, GPS, and third-party watch faces — each close a gap reviewers flagged when the platform debuted.
First-order effects
- Samsung and the other OEMs building Android Wear watches get a more complete OS to ship against: GPS untethers fitness use from the phone, and Bluetooth headset support makes the watch a standalone music controller for runs.
- Third-party watch faces turn what was a fixed Google design into a developer surface, giving app makers their first real customization hook on the platform.
Second-order effects
- Watch-face developers become a differentiator between otherwise similar Android Wear hardware, shifting competition among OEMs toward which device ships with the richest software ecosystem rather than specs alone.
- Standalone GPS and audio push Android Wear watches toward the fitness-tracking use case directly, forcing rivals whose value proposition rests on phone-free workout tracking to respond on price or features.
Third-order effects
- If Google keeps extending Android's playbook — open SDK, third-party customization, carrier-independent updates — to the wrist, wearables consolidate as an accessory layer of the Android ecosystem rather than a separate product category.
- A faster feature cadence from Google would pressure OEM partners to commit to update paths for watches the way they eventually had to for phones, raising the baseline cost of staying in the Android Wear program.
The trend: Android Wear is maturing from a June demo into a full platform, with Google closing capability gaps ahead of the first wave of partner hardware hitting the market.