Android Wear: LG G Watch, Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360, Which is Worth the Money?
Android Wear has been unveiled in the Google I/O 2014. There have been a lot of curiosity around the two Android wearables: LG G watch and Samsung Gear Live, which were both up for pre-order.
Moto 360 also has the curiosity quotient of the Android fans and developers. While LG G Watch is priced at $229 and Samsung Gear Live at around $199, one question on the potential buyer's mind be, "What do these (upcoming) devices have to offer in addition to showing time?"
For now, the smartwatches working on Android Wear platform, have a core use case of being a "notification center" for your Android Phone that has to be Android 4.3+. Apps on your phone send out notifications and these can also be viewed or dismissed in the watch.
Also, there's all the jazz of Google's suite of applications like Google Now, Maps, Translation, Traffic, Weather etc. You can map voice commands to applications and invoke and make the watch interact with them.
In short treat, it has a voice input device and a mini screen for your Android phone. One more interesting feature is that it predicts the info you need and displays notifications relating to the same without you even asking for it. The performance of these predictions might depend on the amount of data you have entrusted Google with, but it remains to be seen if this is a boon or bane for your personal comfort.
But the real question lies if one wants to look at notifications, Google maps, use Google Now etc, why not do it directly on the Android phone? Do we really need to buy one more peripheral for the phone which doesn't really add anything significantly new? '
Are you ready to spend $200 to buy yourself the convenience of not digging into your pocket, search under the pillow, or run to the charging point for your phone every time you get an SMS or an email. It might all boil down to the people buying plain vanilla watches as expensive if not more than the Android Smartwatches, they might also get some extra notification features in addition to the normal watch. Rumor has it that watch majors like Fossil are getting geared up to use Android Wear platform for their next-gen watches.