The official Android blog has today announced the release of the latest Android Wear update. Version 1.4 – previously briefly announced for the aborted LG Watch Urbane 2 – has begun rolling out, and updates should hit all Android Wear watches over the next few weeks.
The update brings your watch’s operating system up to Android 6.0 Marshmallow (so it’s probably running a newer version of Android than your phone) and adds some new gestures and voice commands.
Google previously added roll up/down gesture support for navigating cards, and the new Android Wear allows you to push your wrist down to dive deeper into those cards, lift up to go to the app list or shake the watch to return to the watch face.
You can now better specify the messaging app you want to use to send a message by specifying the messaging app in your voice command by saying “OK Google, send a (app) message to (name) (message)”. Google specifically calls out Hangouts, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat and Nextplus.
Finally, this update will activate the inbuilt speakers in some Android Wear watches – you can make calls and listen to audio/video messages. Hopefully it’ll also produce an audible alarm, although nobody’s mentioned that possibility yet.
On top of this, Android Police reports that Google’s own Messenger app (for SMS/MMS) includes a Marshmallow-specific APK for Wear that could be used to send messages from LTE-enabled Wear devices.
It’s early, but has your Android Wear watch updated yet? What feature are you excited for? Tell us in the comments!
which watches currently have speakers?
Hauwei and Zenwatch2 apparently