Google announced today that Android Wear is now compatible with the iPhone 5 or later running at least IOS 8.2. An official Android Wear for ios Direct Link companion app is rolling out on the App Store today worldwide.
Android Wear for iPhone has several features familiar to Android users, including third-party watch faces, fitness tracking, notifications, Google Now and voice searches. Android Wear for iPhone will also have Google apps such as Weather and Translate preinstalled, but third-party IOS apps are not supported due to Apple's restrictions.
Google has attempted to work around Apple's limitations, but Android Wear for iPhone still has some locked-down functionality compared to what is possible with a paired Android smartphone. Rich notifications, for example, are only supported for a handful of stock Google apps, while the selection of watch faces is limited due to the lack of third-party app support.
Newer Android Wear Watches Now Work On iOS:
once you’ve paired your watch with your iPhone (the app is compatible with the iPhone 5 and all newer iPhones as long as they run iOS 8.2 and up), the actual on-watch experience is pretty much the same as always. The app supports rich notifications from Gmail, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar, Google Now Cards, voice queries, Google Fit support, alarms, and everything else you’d expect (including support for the recently launched Translate app on Android Wear).The app, of course, will also display notifications from all third-party iPhone apps. For now, however, users won’t be able to install any third-party watch apps from Google Play. This means you will see notifications from those apps but won’t be able to directly interact with your fitness tracker on the watch, for example. Google says it’s working on bringing third-party app support to iOS users, too, but it’s unclear when this will happen. WiFi support is also currently absent.
“Not everyone wants the same kind of smartwatch, so offering people choice is important,” Google says. That comment is clearly aimed at the Apple Watch and there is probably some truth in that. Smartwatches are, after all, at least partly fashion accessories and even though Apple offers a number of different variations of its smartwatch, they all look pretty similar in the end.
Google also notes that Android Wear supports always-on watch faces, “so you’ll never have to move your wrist to wake up your watch.” Another thinly veiled swipe at the Apple Watch.
The new app is now making its way into the App Store, so if you can’t find it just yet, give it another try in an hour or so.
© 2015 ,Copyright by Bilal Asghar
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