Newsletter
Over the last week there has been a hell of a lot of updates rolling out to Google products, services and apps. Now most of these have been Lollipop based. With the eventual roll-over from Android 4.4 (KitKat) to Android 5.0 (Lollipop) this was to be expected and nearly all Google related apps will go through significant changes, updates and upgrades. That does not mean though that all the updates rolling out to Google products are so significant or Lollipop based. Today, little ol’ trusty Google Maps received an update. Now this is one of those that I must be quick to state that there does not seem to be any Lollipop based associations with this update. This is not an Android 5.0 update, there is no further Material Design included and instead simply is a standard update. But that doesn’t mean it is any less important.
The current update to Google Maps mainly brings with it updates for Android Wear devices. In particular Android Wear notifications seemed to have received the bulk of the update. This makes sense as a couple of days ago it was reported that Android Wear had actually received a fairly decent update bringing with it support for GPS. Although virtually all Wear devices do not contain GPS the Sony SmartWatch 3 does and this became available to pre-order on the same day. As a result, Google announced and rolled out the Android Wear update with GPS support to kind of welcome the Sony SmartWatch 3 to the market. Today’s Google Maps update with its large focus on Android Wear notifications will probably tie-in quite nicely with the mentioned SmartWatch 3 update. Although it is presumed other non-GPS smartwatches will also benefit from the upgrade to the Wear notifications.
If you are not so worried about Wear notifications and want to know what else you get then the new update also offers support for Hindi which includes voice recognition. The only other listing via the changelog is the predictable and standard ‘bug fixes’. So if you had been noticing any bugs recently then hopefully they will have now been ironed out. Either way if you own a Wear device and haven’t already received the update then head over to the Play Store to get the ball rolling.