Android Wear getting Apple Watch-like features

According to a recent report, Google will bring a range of major new features to their Android Wear platform in their next software update. “Users will reportedly be able to send each other doodles, photos, stickers, messages and more using a feature called Together“.

Currently, users can simply tap once on the watch’s face or swiping to the right to access the app menu, but the new update will substitute the single tap function for increased interactivity with the watch’s “home page”.

Even though Apple arrived after Google to the wearable party, it looks like the late-comer has overshadowed the early-bird.

The update will also apparently bake in support for single tap gestures on watchfaces – something that has been missing in previous versions of Android Wear, but which developers have previously supported using potentially dodgy work-arounds that could crash your watch.

This will require a change to the way you activate the phone’s voice-control launcher, as you now tap the display to do so.

Dubbed “Together”, the new communication feature is similar to the Apple Watch’s Digital Touch capability, which lets wearers swap heartbeats and doodles. “The former would be very unintuitive as users would have to have the watch face selected to send and accept messages from one another”.

There’s also the option to introduce visual changes such as changing colour, or it can be used to open up a new activity – but it seems the activity will be specific to the individual watch face.

“Finally, there’s good news for G Watch R owners, as the smartwatch will finally have WiFi functionality”.

As for the official news of the update we’ll have to wait until at least August, but hopefully once it’s announced it won’t be a long wait.