<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The first two smartwatches based on Android Wear are shipping now. The Samsung Gear Live and the LG G Watch were formally shown off at Google I/O last month, with each device offering users access to Google's vision of Android on your wrist.\nAndroid Wear and its devices join a crowded, yet disparate market of smartwatch options. In addition to the Pebble and Samsung Gear line of wearables, everyone from Metawatch to Qualcomm to Sony have their wrists in this space. Interestingly, many of those systems are also based on Android. Still, being Google's \"official\" vision of Android on the wrist gives Android Wear \u2014 and by extension its devices \u2014 a certain amount of gravitas.\nSee also: 6 Apps That Make Mornings More Manageable\nSo is Android Wear ready for your wrist? We took a look at both Android Wear devices as well as the software to find out.\nLook and feel\nWith the exception of the Moto 360 (and to a lesser extent, the Pebble Steel), all smartwatches today share a similar look: a square black LCD slab screen on a polyurethane watch band. There may or may not be buttons.\nBoth Android Wear watches follow this pattern. At a distance, one would be hard-pressed to distinguish the the LG G Watch from Sony's Smartwatch 2. Button placement aside, the Gear Live looks virtually identical to a Gear 2. \nNeither watch is what we would call \"sexy.\" If you want an Android Wear device that can be a real fashion statement, you'll need to wait for the round-faced Moto 360 which will ship later this summer.\nThe good news is that both the Gear Live and the G Watch feature removable straps \u2014 so you can customize that at least. As with past smartwatches, neither the G Watch nor the Gear Live look like they were designed for someone with two X chromosomes. Nonetheless, while the G Watch is a bit heavy to hold, but I had no problems wearing it on my slight wrists. \nThe Gear Live's silver trim adds a little luster to an otherwise uninspired design. The strap that comes with the watch, however, feels a tad too rigid to ever be really that comfortable.\nThe button on the side of the Gear Live is its saving grace. If you're ever lost or unsure of how to work your watch, it's always there to quickly turn the screen on or off, or to find your settings. Without a button on the G Watch, you sometimes feel at sea.\nBoth watches provide plenty of cool-looking watchfaces to choose from, but neither one displays the time continuously. You need to either move your wrist in a very obvious way or tap the screen to see the time, putting the Gear Live and G Watch at a level of convenience below competitors like Sony and Pebble... and even everyday wristwatches, really.\nYou can enable an option to keep the screen on at all times \u2014 this will allow you to see the time and a recent notification against a black screen. The trade-off, however, is that the already poor battery life (more on that below) will be even worse.\nSpecs: what makes a smartwatch tick\nSpec-wise, the Gear Live and the G Watch are almost identical. Both have 1.2GHz processors, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. And both work with Bluetooth 4.0.\nThe screen sizes are also almost identical \u2014 with the G Watch sporting a 1.65-inch IPS LCD and the Gear Live offering a 1.63-inch SuperAMOLED screen. For its part, Samsung has a higher 320 x 320 resolution display on its device, compared to 240 x 240 for the G Watch.\n\n\nAndroid Wear: Samsung Gear Live and LG G Watch Review\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAndroid Goes Wearable\nThe LG G Watch (left, $229) and Samsung Gear Live (right, $199) are the first two Android Wear devices to hit the market.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGee, I'm Square\n\nThe LG G Watch is $229 and is a standard nondescript smartwatch design. The watch isn't very attractive, but the 1.65-inch IPS LCD is bright and pleasant to look at.\nThe watch is completely devoid of buttons. Anywhere.\n\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNotifications \nAndroid Wear shows app notifications on individual cards on the face of the watch.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDimmed Mode\nWhen the watch display isn't active, the clock is shown along with the most recently accessed notification.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOK, Google\nThe best part of Android Wear is its voice-recognition capabilities. Simply say \"OK Google\" and you can get nearby directions, ask basic questions and even send off texts or emails.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlways Be Charging\n\nThe battery on the G Watch is only 400mAh, which means you'll get about a day of usage out of it.\nFortunately, charging is quite easy, just drop the watch onto a magnetic charging pad and plug it into USB.\n\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSamsung Gear Live\nIf you thought this was a Samsung Gear 2 or Gear Neo, you're forgiven for being confused. Aside from a change in button placement, the Gear Live is visually (and internally) almost identical to Samsung's other smartwatch efforts.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n...And Swipe\nEven though the Gear Live has a button on its side, almost all actions in Android Wear are gesture-driven. That's great in theory, but sometimes the gestures are overly complex and swipes don't work as expected.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWatch This\nYou can customize the watchface for your Android Wear device. This option looks great, especially with the Gear Live aesthetics.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBe Still My Heart\nThe Gear Live includes a heart-rate sensor. So you can know how fast your heart is beating as you countdown the minutes of battery life remaining on your device.\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCharge Me Up, Scotty\n\nThe battery life on the Gear Live is just as abysmal as on the G Watch -- expect a day, no more.\nThe charging apparatus, however, is more clunky. Be careful with this thing -- there are already reports of  the charging pins breaking off.\n\n\nImage: Mashable, Niki Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\nStandard Android Wear hardware components include an accelerometer, digital compass and gyroscope. Samsung basically just rebadged a Gear 2 sans camera in order to make the Gear Live, so it also includes a heart rate monitor.\nBecause Android Wear is so new, it's difficult to tell if the specs are powerful enough for future apps or not. For now, both watches seems snappy and responsive.\nThe big Achilles' heel for Android Wear is battery life. Both watches promise a day of battery life \u2014 and that's about the best you can expect. The batteries inside the devices, 300mAh (milliamp-hours) for the Gear Live and 400mAh for the G Watch, are just too small to sustain bright screens.\nExpecting to get more than a day out of either watch \u2014 even with minimal activity \u2014 is a struggle. That makes charging the actual watch that much more important.\nBoth use contact-based charging pods that connect to USB. Samsung's Gear Live uses the same type of snap-in pod as the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo. This type of pod is better than the original Galaxy Gear smartwatch, but the charging pod is still small enough that you might lose it. There are also early reports that the charging clip might be easy to break off, so be careful.\nAs for the G Watch, it uses a superior magnetic charging base. Just drop the watch on the station and plug in a microUSB cord.\nSetup is a snap\nGetting started with Android Wear is a snap. Just download the Android Wear companion app and make sure Bluetooth is turned on. That's it. Once your phone finds your watch, tap a few buttons and the devices are paired.\nThis is much more streamlined than past smartwatch efforts. Samsung made good efforts at streamlining the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo setup process, but this is super simple. Pebble setup is simple. But the Sony Smartwatch 2 requires you to install app after app from Google Play to see notifications from most services.\nMy only real complaint (which I'll address below), is that the companion app itself doesn't do much. You can browse voice actions and find Android Wear compatible apps, but you can't adjust any specific settings for features such as notifications or app-specific settings.\nInterface\nAt the heart of the Gear Live and the G Watch is Android Wear, Google's OS for wearable devices. Android Wear works with any Android smartphone running Android 4.3 or higher.\nUnlike Samsung's Gear software or the Sony Smartwatch, there is no on-screen navigation and you use gestures to navigate from screen to screen. \nThe problem, at least for me, is that those gestures can be more confusing than necessary. A swipe to the left on one type of notification works different than swiping left on another type of notification. This is especially problematic when dealing with the G Watch, which has no buttons whatsoever.\nYou can also perform tasks by talking to the watch, \u00E0 la Dick Tracy. Google's voice-recognition service is baked into Android Wear, and it works well.\nSimply say, \"OK Google\" when the watchface is visible and speak into the watch. You can set reminders, alarms, query general facts, send an email or text message or even ask for directions.\nWithout a doubt, voice recognition is the best part of Android Wear and Google's implementation works better than any of the solutions from other smartwatch makers. That's partially because the voice recognition ties itself into one of the central tenants of Android Wear: Google Now.\nGoogle Now for your wrist\nGoogle Now is Google's big initiative to add context to everything it touches. It works on Android, iOS, Chrome, Google Glass and is an integral part of Android Wear. The idea is to provide relevant data to the user when needed, without being prompted. Say, I'm on a trip and my checkout time is at noon, but my flight isn't until 8:00 p.m., Google Now can automagically show me movie times for a movie I've recently looked up, playing near my hotel.\nLikewise, it can provide contextual information on weather, traffic, restaurant reservations, nearby events, upcoming appointments, boarding passes for airlines and more.\nEven though I find aspects of Google Now creepy, I must say, the feature works extremely well on the wrist. The card motif that Google Now uses on the desktop, on mobile and on Google Glass, fits in perfectly with the overall Android Wear interface.\nGoogle Now cards pop up on the smartwatch, the idea being that they appear precisely when you need them. In theory, this works well, but it presupposes that all of your information is linked to one primary Google account. If you're like me, and you have one Google account that primarily acts as your main login for services (Maps, YouTube, Google+) and another that is for work (email, calendar, Hangouts), Google Now doesn't work as well as it could \u2014 on or off wrist. This is a larger issue than just Android Wear, but it's worth pointing out, since an increasing number of users have to deal with multiple disparate Google accounts.\nAssuming you're not someone with multiple accounts, however, Google Now is almost seamless. Google is betting big on a few things with Android Wear, the central tenet being about context. The company hasn't nailed the approach, but it's very close for a 1.0 product.\nNotification overload\nAs we've discussed in past #MashTalk hangouts, notifications are really the \"killer app\" for a smartwatch.\nThere's something pretty awesome about getting alerts for email, SMS and phone calls on your wrist \u2014 without having to bother digging out your phone.\n\nAndroid Wear notifications appear on your wrist in the form of Google Now \"cards,\" which you can swipe to dismiss or perform actions on, such as replying or opening on the phone.Image:  Mashable,  Niki WalkerWith Android Wear, every notification pushed to your smartphone is also pushed to your wrist. Apps display notifications on their own card. You get a card for email, a card for Google Hangout messages, a card for tweets. Swiping through cards allows the user to see multiple notifications from the same app and perform actions on them. You can archive, dismiss or reply to a notification \u2014 you can even opt to open a notification on your phone (the default action when the app doesn't support Android Wear yet).\nPaired with voice support, you can respond to texts or emails without ever needing to grab your phone from your pocket. This is really cool.\nYou can mute specific apps from pushing notifications to the watch, but there's no granular control apart from what the app itself offers. That means that if I want to get alerts when certain people email me \u2014 but not everyone \u2014 there's no way to do that. If a notification comes to my phone, it comes to my watch.\nThis is in contrast to some of the solutions offered by Pebble, Sony and Samsung. On iOS, Pebble is more limited in its notification granularity (although there are tweaks you can do to customize that), but on Android you can really tweak things to show up as you wish. Likewise, Sony's setup process is more complex, but it lets users more finely tune what apps can send notifications and for what instances.\nWhile Google's approach certainly keeps things simple, I worry that in this case, a little complexity was actually called for. Because there is IFTTT support for Android Wear, it's possible users could set up complex custom notification schemes to get alerts about specific bits of information.\nNotifications are such a core part of the smartwatch experience and I feel strongly that Google absolutely must address users who want something in between the all or nothing worlds, and soon.\nAt least Google provides an easy \"Do Not Disturb\" feature \u2014 just swipe downward on the watchface and all notifications are muted, though it'd be nice to be able to set it to mute at specific times or locations, too.\nThe thin world of apps\nFor now, app support is limited, but the potential is growing. Apps such as IFTTT, Runtastic and DuoLingo already have Wear app components, and more should come soon. Many of Google's apps \u2014 including Keep, Maps and Hangouts, also have their own apps.\nWith these apps, you can perform additional tasks. With maps, you get turn-by-turn directions directly on your wrist. DuoLingo offers a way to learn languages and Runtastic has integration to make Android Wear feel more like a fitness device.\nThere's even a Flappy Bird clone for Android Wear, which is kind of cool. For now, the app story on Android Wear is really nascent. Apps are just starting to come out and developers are in the earliest stages of creating unique experiences for the phone.\nMy only real complaint about apps is that they're more difficult to open and find than necessary. There isn't a default card for an app unless there is a Google Now related query and there is no centralized app grad that you might find on other smartwatch platforms. I think a persistent card that just says \"Apps\" that leads to the list of available options, would go a long way towards making apps more useful on the wrist.\n\nOne of the many watchfaces available on the Samsung Gear Live.Image:  Mashable,  Niki WalkerI've praised the Pebble developer ecosystem in the past and I still think it is the most robust of any of the smartwatch communities. That said, Google has a good shot at winning mindshare with Android Wear simply because the deep integration of Wear apps with Android itself.\nGoogle is doing everything it can to make it easy for developers to add Wear support to existing apps. Having broad app support will be crucial to Android Wear's success. \nApps and notifications are ultimately what will make or break a smartwatch. Right now, I don't feel comfortable judging the future of Android Wear based on its app platform at this time \u2014 but I do like the direction and potential Google has laid out for developers and users.\nIt's just okay\nMake no mistake \u2014 Android Wear and the first two Wear smartwatches are the very definition of a 1.0 product.\nNeither the LG G Watch nor the Samsung Gear Live is particularly attractive, and battery life is poor. When it comes to the software, there's a lot of potential in Android Wear, but the execution is limited.\nPart of the problem is with the way the interface works. Gestures are great \u2014 but they can get confusing, especially on a smartwatch. The promise of Android Wear \u2014 and Google Now \u2014 is that Google will be able to predict what you want to do next. Until that happens, however, getting to the screen or notification you really want will be an issue.\nThe one true bright spot is the voice recognition. It works great. Google has delivered something really special with its voice recognition software that rivals offerings from anyone else.\nAt the end of the day, my early verdict on Android Wear is that it's just okay. For $200 and $220, the Gear Live and G Watch don't feel overpriced \u2014 but they don't feel like great values either. I contend that if you want a great smartwatch today (albeit without a color or touch screen) the Pebble or Pebble Steel is a much better choice. Android Wear is still mostly potential at this point.\nPete Pachal contributed to this review.\n\nAndroid Wear: Samsung Gear Live, LG G Watch\n\n\nThe Good\nVoice recognition is fantastic \u2022 Works with lots of Android devices \u2022 Ecosystem has real potential\nThe Bad\nCurrent watches are unattractive \u2022 Battery life is abysmal \u2022 Software interface and customization are clunky\nThe Bottom Line\nAndroid Wear has the potential to be great, but it still lags behind competitors in notifications, battery life and just telling the time.          \n\n\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nBONUS: What to (Android) Wear"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/07/10/android-wear-review/>