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Google unveiled the third developer preview for Android Wear 2.0 today. They also unveiled that the launch for this update has been pushed to 2017. But with a new developer preview, comes new features and the big new one here is Google Play on your wrist. In the current version of Android Wear which you’ll find on most smartwatches including the new Michael Kors Access smartwatches, you have to download apps to your smartphone to use on your wrist. That’s not the case anymore. With developer preview 3, you’ll be able to download Android Wear compatible apps from your wrist. The Play Store on Android Wear will allow users to browse through apps as well as search for them using their voice. No more needing to pull out your phone to download a new app.
Developers who have been hard at work with Android Wear 2.0 and making their apps compatible, can now publish them to Google Play. Google notes that you’ll need to be sure that these apps set minSdkVersion to 24 or higher, make sure they use the runtime permissions model and finally, they need to be uploaded via multi-APK using the Play Developer Console. Google also has a developer guide for apps that support Android Wear 1.0. With the third developer preview comes a beta version of the Android Wear companion app. Google also notes that you can use the new version of the companion app with the emulator, for those that don’t have an Android Wear watch that is compatible with the developer preview.
There’s a few more changes in Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 3. One of the bigger ones is Smart Reply, something that has become quite popular with Google products. It’s available in Allo as well as Inbox. There’s also a new API for allowing users to take action on the notification from within the stream. There’s also some improvements to complications in this developer preview, and so much more. You can check out the full release notes at the source link below.
Currently, the developer preview is only available for the Huawei Watch and the LG Urbane 2nd Edition LTE. If you have either of those smartwatches, you can flash the preview onto your device right now. Just remember that this is a developer preview, and will likely be pretty buggy. It’s recommended that only developers flash it at this time, so that they can get to work on their apps, so they can support Android Wear 2.0.
