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You can now pair your Android Wear smartwatch with your iPhone
On Monday, Google announced that Android Wear, the company’s smartwatch operating system, is now compatible with Apple’s iPhone and iOS mobile operating system (via The Verge). The official Android Wear for iOS companion app is available via the App Store and is compatible with the iPhone 5 later running iOS 8.2 or higher.
Smartwatch users with Android Wear devices will find many familiar features when pairing their watch with an iPhone, including third-party watch faces, fitness tracking, notifications, Google Now and voice searches.
Google apps like Weather and Translate are also supported in Android Wear for iOS, but no third-party apps are supported due to restrictions imposed by Apple.
“Basically, like any other iOS developer, we work with Apple to make sure we understand and abide by their guidelines, what the policies for the apps are. That’s what we’re doing, and we’ll continue to do that as we make updates to the app in the future,” Jeff Chang, the lead product manager for Wear, told The Verge.
In addition to the lack of third-party apps, Android Wear watches paired with an iPhone will have access to only a small number of “curated” watch faces, no Wi-Fi access without a paired iPhone, and rich notifications limited to a few native Google apps.
As of now, Android Wear for iOS is compatible with only three Android Wear smartwatches – two of which are yet to be released: the LG Watch Urbane, the upcoming Huawei Watch (pictured above) and Asus ZenWatch 2. All future Android Wear watches will support Android Wear for iOS.
Limiting compatibility appears to be a move on Google’s part to negate the need for customers to perform software updates on older Android Wear devices. “In order to guarantee a good experience, where out of the box it will work immediately and you don’t have to do any fancy footwork, that’s why it has to be the newer watches,” Chang added.
Following the announcement, reports began to surface of older Android Wear watches – including the Moto 360 and LG G Watch R – working with Android Wear for iOS after their owners performed a factory reset.
Image credit: PROKārlis Dambrāns via Flickr
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