Tag: lg g

Android Wear after a week

It’s been a little over a week since I picked up a LG G Android Ware device to play with.

My initial impression seams to hold, it’s ok, but it’s not going to change my world.

We got hold of some Samsung G Lives this week so I’ve swapped to see if there is any difference between them.

Samsung Gear Live

The Samsung looks a bit better, but the out of the box experience was not as good, it wasn’t charged (unlike the LG), it needed updating as soon as it was started (the same as the LG) but it hid the update progress meter down in the settings so it wasn’t obvious that it was doing something when I powered it on. The charging cradle is a fiddly little thing to fit and feels really cheap compared to the really nice magnetic tray that came with the LG.

The only extra feature the Samsung has is a heart rate monitor built into the back of the watch. This is interesting but does require the watch to be warn tight round the wrist. I normally like to let my watches move around a bit so it’s taking a bit of getting used to and I’m not sure I’ll keep it that long. The only real use for the heart rate monitor is going to be during exercise, which is when I’m even more likely to want the device to be loose on the wrist.

Samsung Gear Live Charger

So far I’ve not been impressed enough to with the Android Wear devices to buy one for myself or even to borrow one from work to use for an extended period of time. I will keep an eye on the app developments to see if anybody can come up with a truly compelling use case for one. It will also be interesting to see if the Motorola Moto 360 is any different.

First Impressions – Android Wear – LG G Watch

One of the benefits of working for ETS is that we occasionally get hold of toys to play with, recently a box of LG G Watches turned up so I grabbed one to have a play with.

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Previously I’ve one of the first iteration of Android linked “smart watches”, namely the Sony Liveview. The first version of these really were not great, especially the fact that only the very edges of the screen were touch sensitive didn’t help interacting with them. And the strap wasn’t that comfy so all in all not a good experience.

The LG G seams much better out of the box, the whole screen is touch surface and it has a look and feel much closer to a modern digital watch. The set up process was relatively painless (once I’d overcome some local issues with the office wifi), there was the now usual immediate device update that all modern devices seam to suffer from, but it didn’t take that long.

So far I’ve just been wearing it in the office having it pop up new mail, sms and calendar notifications at the same time as my phone, but I’m out of the office with a research partner for the next 3 days so it will be interesting to see if it’s useful while I’m on the road. There seams to be a deep integration with Google Now which should be useful.

The biggest thing that will determine how useful the whole Android Wear idea is going to be battery life, I’ll keep an eye on it and see how long it lasts.

I also need to have a look at the API to see if I can come up with something fun to do with it and the sensors contained in the device. I do know that the notifications from Tracks2Miles are showing up.