Google recently made
Android Wear smartwatches compatible with the Apple iPhone, and in doing so, released its Android Wear app for iOS. It's an interesting move by Google, but it is a logical decision given its extensive efforts to bring its Google services to Apple's iOS platform. We've gone hands on with the LG G Watch Urbane, which is currently the only Android Wear device on the market that is compatible with the iPhone.
Even though Apple has just about an equivalent service or app for most of the mainstream services that Google offers users, it is arguable that some of Google's apps and services hold a lead over Apple's. The first that springs to mind is Google Maps. Once the default service powering the Maps app on iOS, it was famously dumped by Apple with disastrous results with the arrival of iOS 6. Apple's originally cobbled together Maps app service was littered with errors and gaps in data. While much improved since, Google Maps is still a popular alternative to Apple Maps for iOS users and still holds a substantial edge in a number of areas, particularly outside of the U.S., which has been the focus of Apple's Maps rectification efforts.
Gmail, Google Docs, Google Photos (formerly Picasa), Google Play Music, Chrome, Google Drive, Google Calendar, among others apps and services, are also available to iOS users and provide strong alternatives to Apple's equivalents –- if you really want to have dormant duplicate Apple apps left sitting on your iPhone for each Google one you choose to use. Google Now is another service that holds an edge over Apple's "proactive" equivalent, which is baked into iOS 9. While "proactive" might be reasonably competitive in the U.S. when it launches, based on our early experiences of it, international users will likely have to wait for "proactive" to mature to the level of functionality where Google Now is for international users, right now.
Google Now, as it turns out, is the center-piece of Android Wear. If you haven't tried Google Now before on Android or iOS, it learns to anticipate what your information needs might be, before you even think to look it up yourself. For example, as you are about to set off on your daily trip to the office, it will give you live traffic information including trip time and traffic conditions. However, the downside to this is that to make these functions come to life on your Android Wear device on iOS, you will need to have a Google account and be prepared to let Google track and trace your every move when using its apps and services. The information it provides as a result might be quite useful, but the trade-off is your privacy. Google may anonymize your data, but this is sold to advertisers, whereas Apple only uses this type of anonymized data to improve its products and services.
While Google Now itself can be quite useful, another downside is that Android Wear is still very much underdone. Google basically pushed the Android Wear out the door early last year in order to both retain control over the Android-compatible wearables market. At the same time, it also did this to appease Android OEMs like Samsung, LG, Motorola and others who were keen to get into the wearables market ahead of the then rumored, but yet unannounced Apple Watch. It was largely based around a card-based information and notification system, rather than apps, and was not especially interactive at launch. In order to make it more competitive with the Apple Watch, which has a clever app-based UI and much more interactive OS, Google has added "apps" and made it easier to interact with notifications - but the "app experience," on Android Wear is embarrassing by comparison –- it feels tacked on because it has been tacked on.
Based as it is around Google Now, the Android Wear experience also means that you are constantly prodded by notifications that "peek" in from the bottom of the watch face. This starts to wear thin pretty quickly. Sure, you can turn these off, but then that starts to significantly water down the Android Wear experience substantially. The underdone and tacked on apps are limited in scope and functionality, and you generally just cannot do anywhere near as much on an Android wear device as you can on the Apple Watch. With watchOS 2 not far off, Android Wear will lag even further behind.
Which is a shame really, as the LG G Watch Urbane is a particularly nice piece of hardware. It may not quite have Apple levels of hardware design and engineering prowess, but it is very well crafted. Its focal points is its beautiful circular 1.3-inch P-OLED display, which has a 320x320 resolution. In fact, LG is said to be the supplier of the P-OLED display in the Apple Watch, and you can see why Apple opted for LG's technology. If anything, though, the Apple Watch display looks as though it has better overall color accuracy by comparison, although the pixel density of the two displays is about the same. Apple has previously criticized OLED technology for lacking color accuracy, though in general, OLED displays have made large strides forward in this area in the past couple of years. The rest the Urbane's specs are pretty standard when it comes to Android Wear device hardware, which means that it is powered by a Snapdragon 400 quad-core chip clocked at 1.2GHz and matched with 512MB of RAM. But, as you can see in the gallery photos, it is quite pretty.
The best thing you can say about Android Wear coming to iOS is that does offer you some real choice when it comes to smartwatch hardware, and for the money, it's a great way to find out what the fuss around wearables is all about. Given that you can pick up the LG G Watch Urbane for well under $300 on the street, it will certainly give some people pause before outlaying the extra dollars for an Apple Watch. As it stands, we can't really recommend the LG G Watch for iPhone users - but it has nothing to do with LG's hardware - it has everything to do with Android Wear. Android Wear is getting more features slowly, but it is not a patch on Apple's watchOS and Apple Watch experience, which is the result of a clear vision where software and hardware integrate seamlessly.
- Sanjiv Sathiah
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