Android Wear 1.3 - What's New?
Google began the roll out of Android Wear 1.3 a couple of days ago, bringing a hosts of features, performance improvements as well as new watch faces. The update found its way to the LG Urbane, LG G Watch R and Moto 360 but the update is scheduled to hit the rest of the smartwatches in the near future. So what does Google’s new software update bring? Let’s find out!
The update reached my Moto 360 a couple of days ago and I have been testing it since. The update process is the same as previous generations, download the update (you can do this by heading into settings,about,software updates) then install it. The watch requires 80% or more battery to perform the update and please note that the update process uses around 20-30%, of battery. The watch will then reboot and begin the update- this takes around 10 minutes so be patient!
The overall interface in android wear 1.3 has not changed much. However, the update includes a new watch face (called together), a weather application, google translate, interactive watch faces as well as watch to watch communication. The Together watch face works in conjunction with the watch to watch communication and interactive watch faces. The watch face allows you to send emojis,doodles, photos and stickers directly through to another paired smartwatch! The feature works great although I have noticed a few forecloses on the receivers end. Hopefully this can be easily fixed!
The weather application and Google translate can indeed be very useful tools. Translate works great and can pick up 44 different languages with accuracy. The response time was very quick enabling for quick and fast translations! The weather application was a hit and miss for me. My black Moto 360 was unable to find current weather despite being connected to the internet. However, my silver Moto 360 had no problems displaying the weather information spontaneously. As for my black Moto 360 the weather application still ceases to work...
Performance has thoroughly improved in this update along with battery life. Navigating through cards, activating Google Now and changing the watch face has never been easier. There are no longer any noticeable lags or stutters. Battery life also seems to be better lasting me an entire day from 7am to around 11pm with 21% of juice when normally my watch would be dead. It’s also worth mentioning that new animations have been added when clicking through the interface!
LG G Watch R users will also be happy to know that WIFI capability has been added. After the controversy in the previous update, LG have decided to enable WIFI!!!
So is the update life changing? The short answer is NO, but the update was long needed for many users.
