Google smartwatch review roundup: Android Wear put through its paces

Google's new smartwatches are a step forward, but still have some way to go. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

Google's first smartwatches have hit reviewers' hands in the US and Android Wear is being put through its first paces.

Google hopes that Android Wear - its new software for smartwatches and other wearable devices - will convince users that smartwatches are actually useful.

Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal thinks Android Wear's secret weapon is Google Now.

Thanks largely to Google Now, the online personal assistant that prompts you with information you need, these feel like the first watches that are truly 'smart.' But there's still too much smartphone in them. I don't want something on my wrist that looks and acts like a phone.

You can also just tell the watch what to do. Its microphone is always listening for a voice prompt-'OK Google'-and spoken commands such as 'search the Web,' 'send a text,' 'set a reminder,' etc.

'OK Google, text Mom: I'm going to make the 3 pm train,' I said into the watch as I was running through Penn Station. Even though my phone was buried in one of my many bags, the text message fired off.

And yes, when I raise my arm to my mouth, even to set a reminder to pick up toothpaste, I feel like a Secret Service agent.

Anick Jesdanun from the AP sees less as more.

In its first iteration, Google's Android Wear software for computerised wristwatches isn't so much about innovation as it is an effort at simplification.

But Wear, an extension of a smartphone, isn't going to work for everyone or every Android device.

Android Wear requires a companion smartphone running Android 4.3 or later. That covers KitKat and the later versions of Jelly Bean, but according to Google's own stats, only about a quarter of Android devices have either. For a variety of reasons, many recent phones can't be upgraded. And of course, no iPhones.

And as Jesdanun points out, no Dick Tracy moments:

You can't use the watch as a speakerphone for calls, the way previous Samsung smartwatches allowed. But you can make calls or answer ones that come in. The call still goes through the phone, but that's not a problem if you have a Bluetooth headset.

One thing that surprised me about Android Wear is how quiet it is. while you do talk to Android Wear, it doesn't usually talk back. It just shows you what you need to know on your screen.

That isn't a complaint. On the contrary, I think Android Wear hits this part right on the head.

That's not to say the watches aren't constantly buzzing on your wrist with notifications.

Like most smartwatches, Android Wear is largely about notifications. But while other watches simply forward a few lines of text from your smartphone's notification centre, Wear handles alerts more maturely. With Wear, you don't just read a few words from an incoming message. You can also read the full message (other watches usually cut off longer emails), see your friend's contact picture in the background, view your conversation history and reply by voice. It handles SMS, email and Hangouts (though you can't start a new Hangout, only reply to an existing thread). It even lets you archive Gmail messages when you're done with them.

But what's missing is the apps, which is probably be expected at this stage given that the devices haven't been released for sale yet and Android Wear has only just been released to developers.

What's missing right now is third-party app integration. And even when those start popping up, we still won't see full 'apps' per se. It will be more like developers updating their Android smartphone apps to add Wear widgets. I think this is the ideal way to handle wearables. This isn't a standalone platform that can run independently from your phone, so why pretend like it is? The last thing we need is another isolated platform with its own app store.

Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo says having Android in the name doesn't mean it can do anything on its own.

Without a tethered smartphone, Wear is nearly useless. It can't access the Internet or use voice commands, leaving you with only a handful of basic chronographic functions like starting a timer or stopwatch. Your first step after installing the Wear app is therefore to turn on Bluetooth, pair the watch with your phone, and give it access to the notification API.

Despite having small screens Android Wear's easy to tap screens make using the watches a bit easier.

One nice touch is that the touch targets of Wear are also much larger than the icon that represents them. Blue action icons will actually trigger from a touch anywhere on the screen, not just within the blue circle, and things like the time/notification card on the home screen are actually just a full screen 50/50 split. Making the touch targets deceptively large helps with quickly using the watch.

And while third-party support isn't as well developed as it could be, most apps work because of Google's past Android updates.

Because Google laid the groundwork for Android Wear one year ago with Android 4.3, the OS has out-of-the-box compatibility with most apps.

Android Wear also does a better job of being controlled via voice, removing the need to pause after activating the voice recognition with the 'OK, Google' hotword, for instance.

Wear does buffer voice input after the hotword, so you can quickly say, 'OK Google, set a timer for five minutes,' and it will catch everything.

Dieter Bohn on the Verge explains that Android Wear is fairly simple to use, for the most part.

Getting around the watch is simultaneously dead simple and a little complicated. It's dead simple as long as you treat the watch as a dumb terminal to your phone and don't worry about finding those advanced features. You simply swipe up to scroll through your notifications, swipe right to dismiss them, and swipe left to access more options for each one. It gets complicated when you want to dig into some of the options; they're so buried under hard-to-find 'Start' and 'Settings' menus that I can only assume Google wants to you mostly ignore them. Fortunately, you can do exactly that most of the time.

Plus, deleting an email from your wrist is certainly satisfying.

It's a small happiness to get an email you want to immediately destroy and be able to immediately destroy it from your watch. It's a small happiness to glance down and see that the weather or package-tracking information you want is sitting right there. But for every time Android Wear gives you exactly what you want, there's another time that it frustrates you. If you have more than one email stacked up, for example, you can't manage them from your watch - you'll have to go to your phone for that.

While most are waiting with baited breath for Motorola's large, round smartwatch, the 360, the first two Android Wear-powered smartwatches are the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live.

Mario Aguilar from Gizmodo rates the LG G Watch, but only really has eyes for the Moto 360.

Not yet. If a smartwatch is a thing you desperately want, the LG G Watch is the prettiest hardware you can buy right now, but you should definitely wait until the end of the summer to see if the stunning Moto 360 is any good. You should also wait until Android Wear's various quirks have been addressed, which we're hopeful, if naively so, that they will be promptly.

Aguilar also observes on battery life:

On full charge you can expect more than a full day of average usage with the screen set to always on. If you set the screen to turn off when the phone is inactive, your battery efficiency goes way up.

But Tech Crunch's Darrell Etherington writes that LG's buttonless design can be a bit confusing.

The buttonless design of the LG G Watch presents some interesting challenges; figuring out how to turn the device on took some time, for instance, and I had to eventually resort to reading the included paper instruction booklet to find out that you have to put it in the magnetic charging cradle to power it up.

Up front is a 1.63-inch touchscreen using Samsung's favored AMOLED technology. It's minutely smaller than LG's IPS LCD panel, but higher resolution at 320 x 320 for a total pixel density of 278ppi. Display-fanciers I spoke to at Google I/O were divided on the bottom-line quality of the screen, but it's ideal for the wrist: bright colors, eye-catching, and with smooth graphics.

Where it struggles is outdoors, with sunlight visibility fading versus the LG's screen (though to be blunt, neither is especially sun-friendly). Android Wear's bold graphics look great indoors, however.

What about battery life, though?

It'll obviously depend considerably on what you use your Android Wear smartwatch for - notifications are relatively low-intensity; voice commands and navigation are more demanding - but I always managed to get through a full day of use before I needed any sort of recharge.

But with either smartwatch arguably Seth Weintraub from 9to5 Google hits the nail on the head.

Perhaps what's most important about Android Wear compared to say Google Glass, is that it is understated. Most folks won't know your watch is a Google device and unless you invoke it, probably will think you have a normal, if slightly bulky, wristwatch... something that society has long ago accepted wholeheartedly.

* Google I/O 2014: smartwatches, Google Fit - and Android L