Story 2015-08-25 JCCN Google's Androidwear update brings interactive watch faces, translation

Google's Androidwear update brings interactive watch faces, translation

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in google on (#JCCN)
Smartwatches are here, but are they here to stay? Given short battery life and - for the moment, limited use cases - Google, Apple, and the others are in a race to build or have built apps that make your smartwatch a must-have item.

Google's latest innovation for Androidwear is interactive watch faces and translation apps. The interactive watch face is a direct assault on Apple, who has not permitted similar functionality for its Apple Watch. Tap, and the watch reveals more information like weather, fitness, to unread mail, to upcoming meetings and so on. There's obviously room for improvement here, but allowing it to happen at all is a step in the right direction. The folks at Google have indicated there are more than 1,500 watch faces currently available.

Their second innovation is putting a built in Google translate on their smartwatch. RTOZ reports:
just speak into your watch to see your conversation translated into any of 44 languages. Flip your wrist to show the translation to a friend. When they respond in their own language, flip your wrist back, and you'll see in your language what they've just said.

Google Translate will automatically recognize which of the two languages is being spoken, so once you tap to start the conversation, all you and your buddy need to do is keep talking naturally.

Google Translate covers 90 languages total (for text translation), and also Google is working on to expand more number of languages that work across various features.
Reply 1 comments

Cool, but really usable by everyday people? How often? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-08-25 13:57 (#JDDV)

I don't often need a translator by my side. If it works perfectly, its still not enough to entice a purchase of a smart watch.

And I doubt it works perfectly.