There is a new Android Wear update on the horizon for smart watches. Thanks to a blog post from Google and release notes from the second gen Moto 360. We have some details of what to look forward to. First off we’ll be getting some new gestures. Not only will you be able to scroll through cards but now you can expand a card, bring up your apps, or return home to your watch face with a push, lift, or shake.
Then one of the most exciting new features will be speaker support. Which will allow you to make actual calls with your watch, or listen to voice messages. Of course this will require a watch with a built in speaker. Right now that consists of the Huawei Watch and the Asus Zenwatch 2 49mm.
Now thanks to the release notes from the second gen Moto 360 update. We can see a couple more additions have been made. These include the Doze feature from Android 6 Marshmallow. Which optimizes your apps and puts them into a sleep mode when your device is idle. Saving a lot of battery life in the process. If you’ve seen the battery graph on Marshmallow devices you’ve seen the big notches from when the phone is idle. However I don’t know how much time your watch stays idle when it’s constantly on your wrist. Perhaps it might help extend your battery life if you take it off at night or while sleeping.
One other feature carried over from Marshmallow are app permissions. Soon we’ll be able to control what the apps on our watch has access to. At the moment I’m not sure how useful this will be on the watch. I’m not sure what my apps have permission to, but more control is always nice. Both of these are welcomed additions from Marshmallow, and I’m glad to see them brought over to Android Wear.
Now everyone back to tapping the update button, while we wait ever so impatiently to try out all the new features.
Source: Android Authority
