Google has been moving at a pretty predictable pace with their Android Wear updates. It’s been an average of a release every four months for the still relatively new platform, and with Android Wear 5.1.1 announced in April, next month we’re due for some more goodies on our wrists – and that’s apparently exactly what’s going to happen.
According to Derek Ross over at Phandroid a new update is coming next month which will bring some exciting new features. First and foremost the update will include the long awaited update for G Watch R owners which will enable Wi-Fi, which was a part of the 5.1.1 update. But when it comes to new features there’s some pretty neat updates in-store if it all comes out.
The big one is a Google supported implementation of interactive watch faces. This will mean that Android Wear watch faces will get a new swipe or tap gesture they can access to bring about changes in state to the face. Changes can be as simple as changing the face colour, bringing up additional information and then reverting state, or swiping in a card that contains more information (think Google Fit card on the Google Fit watch face. The guys at Phandroid have mocked up a couple of these to demonstrate:
Google is also rumoured to be bringing in watch-to-watch communications. According to Phandroid, the new function will allow users to ‘send each other messages, stickers, emojis, and doodles in a new watch to watch communication method called Together’. Phandroid have looked at the underlying code, and seem to think this may be limited to a specific watch face, but anything can happen.
Phandroid expects the announcement for this rumoured update in August, and it sounds pretty good to us.
