Android Wear 2.0 might be delayed until next year, but there’s a lot going on in the smartwatch scene, including a number of great new Android Wear watch faces and apps. Each and every month, we take a look at some of the best fresh and new Android Wear watch faces and apps. For our October 2016 edition, we have some great-looking watch faces, some interesting new apps as well as some novel introductions to the Play Store. If you’re looking for some apps to keep your Android Wear device alive and well, or some recommendations for your friends, this list should have a little something for everyone.
Mr.Time: Signal
Mr. Time has become a well known name in the world of Android Wear watch faces, and this latest is a classic, retro-looking affair. With an LCD look and feel to it, this is perhaps a great face for those that miss their G-Shock watches and their simplistic LCD watch faces. It’s not a free app, which is par for the course for much of Mr. Time’s watch faces, but it may or may not be worth it depending on your outlook. It’s a nice watch face nonetheless.
Halloween Watch Faces
It’s October, which means that not only are the leaves falling away from the trees but it also means that Halloween is coming up as well. It might not be that a big deal outside of the United States, but it’s a big deal here of course, and a lot of families and companies will be holding Halloween parties. As such, Halloween Watch Faces is a nice set of watch faces with your classic selection of pumpkins, full moons and so on, to wear on your wrist. It’s not free, but it’s not too expensive either, which makes this a small price to pay if you’re into Halloween.
Mood Muse – Wear Mood Tracker
Keeping in touch with the recent trend of wellness and keeping track of how you’re feeling, Mood Muse is a simple Android Wear app that asks you to register whether you’re in a good mood or not feeling so good. The idea with Mood Muse is to register how you’re feeling on a particular day and then register what you were eating, how well you slept to help educate you on what makes you feel good or what makes you feel bad. It might be simple, but it’s the sort of app that will appeal to those who like their Fitbits and such.
Wear My Number
This is a simple Android Wear app for those that are quite forgetful, as it allows them to tap in their phone number – or any phone number you want – and then bring it up on your smartwatch whenever you need it. The use cases for this sort of thing are pretty high, like for instance for business use, when you’re at a meeting you could wear your business number for all clients to take down the number correctly, as well as making it easy to see what your work line is.
Chroma Watch face
Those of you in the PC gaming scene will no doubt understand what this watch face is all about. With PC gaming keyboards as well as mice now sporting full-RGB backlighting, there are sorts of things we can do with our peripherals. Now, with Chroma Watch Face, these PC gamers can do the same thing on their wrist. It’s not a free watch face, and it’s not going to appeal to everyone, but with a colorful and easy-to-read look and feel it’s a pleasant addition to a collection.
Max Altimeter
This is an app for those that are skilled enough to fly a plane or those that enjoy the great outdoors. It displays both your longitude and latitude as well your altitude, which makes this a great watch face for exploring in the mountains and such, as well as a great companion for those pilots out there. Simple, easy to use with a decent phone app to go with it, this is worth checking out.
Wearbook Beta
For those that just can’t bear the thought of not being able to check Facebook on the move, Wearbook Beta is a new app that is looking to help with that. It’s not a perfect app and as the name suggests, it’s still in testing. Wearbook Beta will allow Facebookers to look at posts from their feed right on their wrist and while that won’t appeal to everyone, there will be more than a few out there that will have been looking forward to this sort of functionality for a while.
Broken Watch Face
This free and fun watch face does pretty much what its name suggests; it displays a broken watch face right on your wrist. There’s a phone app that allows you to tweak things, and while it’s clearly a piece of fun, it does look pretty nice and the time is still easy-to-read as a result. There’s not a huge amount to write home about here, but with its almost Comic Book look and feel, this will certainly bring a smile to some wearers out there.
Phone Locker for Wear
Another simple little app for Android Wear is this, Phone Locker for Wear. Allowing users to lock their smartphone from their watch isn’t something everyone will be looking to do, but with fingerprint sensors and therefore PINs or patterns more commonly in use, this could help you lock down a phone that has landed in the hands of a friend or little one. It’s free, has a simple phone app and works really well on your smartphone. The only drawback really is that you need to give the app admin access.
Blackout for Android Wear
Unsurprisingly, Android Wear users are most likely to charge their watches on their nightstands, just like their smartphones. As such, this means that LEDs from chargers or even the displays from watches themselves can be an annoyance. Blackout for Android Wear is an app that hopes to get rid of some distractions when trying to go to sleep, by turning the display of your Android Wear device completely black while charging. This isn’t the first app out there to do this, but it’s worth trying if the others haven’t worked, or if you’re looking for something a little more polished.