Android Wear, LG G Watch and Motorola Moto 360

Coming soon
19th March 2014

Whether smartwatches are the next big thing or a fad is hard to say, but the idea of putting phone functions onto a watch has been around for more than five years with devices such as the LG GD910 and Samsung S9110. None of those devices succeeded, and more recent attempts such as the original Samsung Galaxy Gear couldn't break into the market either.

It seems that making a watch phone or smartwatch is trickier than it looks, and Samsung completely reworked the operating system of their offering when they made the Tizen-based Gear 2. Now, Google have announced a more focused effort on smartwatches with Android Wear, a platform designed especially for wearable devices such as smartwatches which adds features such voice activation and can use novel sensors such as heart rate monitors.

Two manufacturers have announced that Android Wear devices are in development. The LG G Watch is one such device due for launch during Q2 2014. This voice-activated device looks like a traditional smartwatch and comes from one of the companies that tried to popularise watch phones all those years ago.

Motorola have also announced the Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch, and unlike the LG this features a round display panel which looks amazing, but we suspect will be a pain to develop applications for. This isn't the first time that we've seen Motorola come up with a design like this, the mad-as-a-box-of-frogs Motorola AURA also featured such a panel. Like the AURA, the Moto 360 looks like it might be a rather expensive device. This is slated to be available during the summer of 2014, starting in the US.

Google say that many other mobile and watch manufacturers are onboard with this project and should release new devices, but we suspect that they will be watching these LG and Motorola smartwatches first to see if there is actually any consumer interest.

Video: Android Wear - Information that moves with you