lk with me as I show you important Android ar features, share what surprised me the most. Notice how this particular Samsung watch face (“Dark Analog”) turns into a more complex chronograph upon waking. Notice how this watch face exposes more card information than the face in the last slide. Samsung offers 17 faces, they all seem to vary in the depth of their notifications. tch faces offer OEMs a small degree of customization (Samsung offer different face options), you can pick a new face with a long-press on your display. Notice that it’s just a brief snippet. ’s intention is to limit the amount of text you see on a single card to make these screens as “glanceable” as possible. It’s a UI approach that’s mostly consistent throughout the OS, though if you run a voice search that spawns an information card, you might see a multi-line presentation with three screens worth of scrolling. Once you kill a card by swiping it to the right, it’s gone forever. engineering director David Singleton told me that user studies indicate there’s no outsting reason to maintain a card history. He also said Android ar won’t expose Now cards for information that doesn’t fit the context of a wrist wearable—for example “at to watch” TV recommendations. The good news is that when you turn on your hset after mashing the “Open on phone” button, your phone will shoot you straight to the app or information you requested. The upshot: Android ar runs apps, but completely ditches the traditional “home screen with a grid of app icons” construct. st two early observations about where voice control breaks down: First, I found the feature unreliable in loud environments. Second, I felt like an OKhole when uttering the phrase in public. The speech-recognition algorithms are surprisingly accurate. The most frustrating part is resolving duplicate or same-name entries in your phone’s Contacts list. It’s a convenient way to launch a navigation session when you’re driving. You can keep your h on the steering wheel, while your phone remains cradled. Unfortunately, you can’t yet default the system to walking directions, that’s a shame because Android ar shows such great potential for exploring cities by foot. There are also voice comms for setting reminders, timers, a stopwatch function. The “Send a note” function is great, but I’d like an option to send notes to a note-taking app instead of to my own personal email address. Samsung’s step interface also has a feature that lets you check you heart rate with the Gear ve’s built-in spectroscopic sensor. This is pretty much the Android ar way: l the cards are big on visuals, light on text. This is ’s “glanceable” promise to users. That said, I’ve used Android ar long enough to know it’s pointing smartwatch interface design in the right direction. don’t need smartphone apps on 1.6-inch displays. need the simple, easily digested information snippets that ar provides. Add in Now’s contextual alerts (usually) accurate voice control, you have a platform that could make us forget the convoluted software design of earlier smartwatch efforts. To that extent, the Gear ve is Samsung’s best smartwatch yet.
