Google has announced their Android Wear operating system for wearable devices back in March and the first Android Wear-powered smartwatches, LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live, launched in June. Android Wear is a solid operating system out of the box and I use it constantly during the day on my G Watch, but it has lots of shortcomings, or should I say things that should be improved. I’m not going to type a list of the negative and / or positive sides of Android Wear considering that would take a long, long time and we’d go far off-topic. Let’s just say that Android Wear platform needs time and a few more updates in order to come what it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to grow up in a way, just like every other newly released operating system. That being said, Google has announced that the Android 5.0 for Android Wear is ready to go and has listed a number of changes that will arrive along with the update. A slew of much-needed fixes and optimization along with a couple of features, of course. Google has released the Watch Face API which was long-awaited by the developers and the company has announced February as the deadline for the unofficial Android Wear Watch Face developers. New display modes are also inbound as well as the ability to retrieve the notification that you accidentally dismissed.
The Mountain View giant has confirmed that the update will be rolling out to Android Wear smartwatches over the next week, by saying the following: “Over the next week, the latest release of Android Wear, based on Android 5.0 and implementing API 21, will roll out to users. All Android Wear devices will be updated to Android 5.0 via an over-the-air (OTA) update. The update allows users to manage and configure watch faces in the Android Wear app on their phone, and install watch faces from Google Play. Any handheld device running Android 4.3 or later will continue to work with all Android Wear devices”. Google also recommends that the developers update their apps as soon as the Android 5.0 API 21 update hits Android Wear smartwatches, and not until then considering the watchface running that API won’t be visible after the OS gets updated. Google has also released a video for Developer via company’s Google Developers YouTube channel, you can check out the video below the article, it’s a rather interesting watch whether you’re a developer or not.