Development for Android Wear 2.0 has been rather slow at a crawling pace this year. With major manufacturers stating that they won’t be launching Android Wear smartwatches this year, the official release of Android Wear 2.0 has apparently been pushed back to some time in 2017. Meanwhile, Google has just released the Developer Preview 3 for the wearable OS.
The announcement, which comes from the Android Developers official blog, states that the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 3 features a major add-on – Google Play Store. With the new Play Store on Android Wear, users can now install watch-only apps, meaning that if a user only wants the app to be on his smartwatch, he doesn’t necessarily have to get it installed in his Android handset. The major addition also means that users can now browse through recommended apps on their watch home screen, or search up on apps using voice, the new keyboard or handwriting.
Along with the announcement, Google has also mentioned the timeline for Android Wear 2.0. The company will be carrying on with the preview program till early next year, indicating that there will be an Developer Preview 4 for Android Wear 2.0. For the average consumer, this would mean that we won’t be seeing an official release for Android Wear 2.0 till after early 2017, though “early 2017” is pretty vague on its own. Are you looking forward to Android Wear 2.0?
Source: Android