Google smartwatch review: should you Wear Android?

LG G Watch: £159

What do you want from your watch? In an age where millions don’t wear one at all because they get the time from their mobile phone, it’s becoming harder than ever to see the point of the original wearable piece of technology.

Not, however, if you’re Google, Samsung, LG and, allegedly, Apple. All these technology companies, as well as a host of smaller names such as Pebble, are focusing on the watch as the next frontier. They believe that, while many have been making watches since 2008 or 2009, the smartwatch’s year will be 2014. The change is two-fold: first, Google is strapping itself to the idea of a smartwatch with a stripped down version of its world-leading smartphone software, now dubbed Android Wear. And second, everyone expects Apple to launch the iWatch in October and they want desperately to own the market before the world’s biggest technology company can get there.

Time’s right?
The first of the latest generation of smartwatches was Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, which was criticised by many for not even consistently showing the time. The new Android Wear models fix that by using a dimmed, always-on display that shows both the time and, if you want them, some basic notifications. It’s a huge improvement, albeit one that only puts the device back on the level of the classic Casio calculator.

Without a connection to a smartphone, the watches are very basic, offering only time and stopwatch or timer functions, but another improvement over the Galaxy Gear, or presumably Apple’s iWatch, is that the new Wear models can connect to any fairly modern Android phone. So you can use a Samsung phone with an LG watch, for instance. This is the kind of openness that has driven the mainstream success of Android on phones as a whole.

Battery life
Very few watches in current use need charging at all; there needs to be some serious, novel utility to justify a smartwatch that does. LG claim the G Watch can last 36 hours on a single charge, so you should theoretically need to charge it every other night. In practice, I found that it lasted the day comfortably, unless you were using for something particularly intense, such as getting directions.

But what does it do?
In short, the LG G Watch is Google Now on your wrist – that means notifications about appointments, flights, parcels and more are all within a swipe of the finger. Tap the screen and scroll up to see what’s new on your wrist. If it’s an email you can tap, swipe down to see the entire message, with a picture of the sender in the background, then swipe right to archive, reply using voice recognition or show it on your phone. With similar Google Now ‘cards’ such as those that show you directions to home or work, swipe right to start to see a map then navigate straight there (and demolish the battery). Most cards are simply a notification and then the option to open on your phone. The options, in that sense, are limited, but the practical benefits of not having to get your phone out of your bag are tangible.

The time is Now?
Those benefits, however, are not that great – and Google doesn’t let you customise what Google Now does to any great extent. Walking around London, Now will sometimes alert you to relevant pieces of information, and being able to use your voice to reply to Hangouts, messages, emails and more, as well as set alarms, is all useful. None of it is innovative per se – it’s simply putting existing information and functions on your wrist rather than in your pocket, and managing it can get a bit fussy.
Step forward
Google hints at the next stage with the pedometer built in to the G Watch – you can see how far you’ve walked against a 10,000 step goal, and the possibilities that come with a watch rather than a phone become rather clearer. But none of this is there quite yet. Google Now needs to tell you more and it needs to interact better. But that evolution will only truly take place if its simplicity is coupled with greater functionality, which demands more products, improving through iteration.

Design for life
The actual shape of the G Watch is that of a simple, black rectangle. It looks slightly too fat, and that’s even without the camera that Samsung packed into their original Gear. The forthcoming Moto 360 looks more like a watch, while Samsung’s model looks much like its existing smartwatches. But all of them will run Android Wear – while the much-anticipated Motorola model may look round and jewellery-ish, all these models are alpha products. For early adopters who like to be Google’s guinea pigs, they’re well worth the £169 price tag. For everyone else, there are years to wait for cheaper, effortlessly useable products.

Manufacturer's specifications
 Display: 1.65-inch LCD IPS (280X280)
 OS: Android Wear
 Compatibility: All smartphones running Android 4.3 and above
 Chipset: 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor
 Memory: 512MB
 Internal Storage: 4GB
 Bluetooth: 4.0
 Sensor: 9-Axis (Gyro / Accelerometer / Compass)
 Water & Dust Resistance: IP67
 Battery: Li-Polymer 400mAh
 Strap size: 22mm (Interchangeable with other 22mm straps made of leather, fabric, or metal)
 Dimensions: 37.9 X 46.5 X 9.95mm
 Weight: 63g