LG G Watch Hands On

We are at Google I/O 2014 and got our hands on upcoming LG G Watch which is the first Android Wear based smart watch from the Korean company.While we had heard about the G watch before , it is the first time the company is actually showing it off publicly.Google even confirmed that it would be handing it out to attendees at Google I/O and also it is currently available for purchase on the Play Store.The main functionality of the watch is that it acts like an extension of Google Now on your phone but now on your wrist. You can see your messages , calls, calendar items, Google Now cards such travel, weather and you can also see the time. Check out the hands on video below :-

The G Watch follows a square design philosophy for the smartwatch and has a 1.65 inch IPS LCD as the main interaction point.It is available in 2 colors – black titan and white gold and the straps are changeable.

Powering the watch is a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip paired with 512MB of RAM. There is 4GB of inbuilt storage and the battery is rated at 400mAh.

The G Watch runs on Android Wear and is not only compatible with LG android phones but any smartphone running android 4.3 and above.

The watch can be charged by means of the pin based connectors on the back of the device

The G watch is dust and water resistant and can stay in water up to meter deep for 30 mins

Google announces Google Fit platform for fitness and health tracking

Google officially announced its own health and fitness tracking platform that competes with Apple’s recently launched Healthkit. Dubbed as Google Fit, the platform will aggregate and collect your fitness data at one place. It will help users monitor their fitness activities like heart rate, blood sugar, steps taken etc on this platform.

The basic idea is that Google is creating a single set of APIs which will allow fitness/health tracking apps and devices to share data with the aim of building a more “complete picture of the user’s fitness”. Users will be given full control over sharing their information with apps and will be able to delete data at any time.

Google Fit partners already include Nike, HTC, LG, Withings, Motorola, Noom, Runtastic, RunKeeper, Adidas, Mio, and Polar. Nike also announced that it will integrate its popular Fuel points system into Google Fit for other apps to use. Adidas is also developing a line of sensor-based health wearables that will integrate with the Google Fit platform.

Google updates Drive with Microsoft Office editing and more new features

Google announced several updates and enhancements to Drive at the I/O developer conference. For starters, users can edit Microsoft Office files through the cloud-based platform. This mean users can view, create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations on both mobile devices and the desktop in their native format.

Google is also adding offline support to Docs, Slides and Sheets which will enable users to work on documents without an internet connection on their mobile and desktops. The company has also rolled out a standalone Slides app which helps users make presentations from the mobile. Currently, the app is available for download on Google Play Store and will soon land on Apple App Store. Drive gets a new feature that makes it easier for multiple people to edit the same document.

Google Drive is also getting a “Drive for Work” offering, aimed at the enterprise. It will have unlimited storage and will cost $10 per month, per user. It will have enhanced security and features traditionally important to the enterprise. The company has also added new security features to protect documents stored on Drive as they are encrypted both at rest and in transit to your browser and between Google’s servers.

Google revealed that its Drive service now has over 190 million monthly active users. The product’s user base has grown 85 percent in the last year alone. Google claims that Drive for mobile has become faster and easier which helps hassle free navigation.

Samsung Gear Live Photo Gallery

Samsung, though not part of the initial list of partners associated with Android Wear, surprised everyone by announcing the Gear Live yesterday, which has already gone on sale in the US today, and is no onpre-order in India, for a price of Rs. 15, 900. Following the design philosophy of its other Gear devices, this Android Wear based Smartwatch will be sold along with the LG G watch. Both the Korean giants have their own first Android Wear based Smartwatches out, but lets focus on the Gear live here, which adds the unique functionality to measure heart rate using the hear rate sensor on its back. It looks and feels pretty similar to the other Gear watches, unsurprisingly, so lets take a photo walkthrough of this device, straight from the I/O developer event in San Francisco.

The Samsung Gear Live comes with a stainless steel body and a usual rubbery strap, just like its siblings. It’s basically the same as the Samsung Gear 2 with Android Wear.

It has a 1.63″ touchscreen with a 320×320 resolution at the front and can listen to you using built-in microphones. This will come in handy when using “Ok Google” commands. Internally, it runs on a 1.2 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of storage, with Bluetooth 4.0 being the standard for connectivity.

The watch sits in a plastic casing, with charging points and a heart rate sensor housed at the bottom. The charging points connect with the charging cradle and the heart rate sensor is exclusive to Samsung in Android Wear, as other devices don’t seem to have it. There is also a single physical button at the right side.

Running Android Wear, rather than Tizen, the Gear Live will be able to work with all Android devices, running 4.3 Jellybean or above. Here in this picture above, you see a Hangouts notification from the phone, which is interactive. Swipe up for the next notification, or swipe right or left for actions. a better idea of the underlying OS can be understood from our hands on video earlier -

It will also include dedicated sensors to calculate fitness data through its pedometer, its heart rate sensor and so on.

Samsung Gear Live Hands On

The Samsung Gear Live was revealed for the first time by Google during the keynote at Google I/O 2014 and it is Samsung’s first Android Wear device. We managed to spend some time with the device at the event.Here is a short video of the Gear Live watch in action.Under the hood is a 1.2 Ghz processor paired with 512MB of RAM.

Like other Android Wear devices, the Samsung Gear Live provides quick access to information from your phone through Bluetooth.You get access to your messages, mail , meetings and also google now cards such as travel,weather,directions etc.

The most interesting fact about the Samsung Gear Live is that it works with non-Samsung devices too as it runs on the Android Wear platform.This is indeed surprising as most of Samsung’s recently launched products work only with select Samsung devices.

Like on most Samsung devices , the main highlight of the Galaxy Live is the 1.63 inch SuperAMOLED display on the front sporting a 320x320px resolution. My only concern is that the battery is rated only at 300mAh which is even lower than the LG G Watch which has a 400mAh battery.

One of the main features of the Gear Live is the heart rate monitor which was found on Samsung’s Tizen based Galaxy Fit and Gear 2 which were launched recently.

Charging is possible via an adapter which lets you plug in a microUSB cable. The device is water and dust resistant and meets the IP67 requirements.The Gear Live will be sold in 2 colors -  Black and Wine Red and is already up for pre-order on the Google Play store for $199 in the US

LG G Watch Photo Gallery

LG was one of the first manufacturers to announce a Smartwatch based on Android Wear, but yesterday, at the Google I/O developers conference, the device was made available for sale, making it the first Android Wear Smartwatch in the market along with the Samsung Gear live. This being LG’s first watch, unlike Samsung, the approach, although bland, is a bit different. Priced at $229 in the US and Rs. 14,999 in India, where it is currently on pre-order, the LG G watch makes for an interesting first look at the Android Wear ecosystem. Lets take a photo walkthrough of the device in action, but before that, here isour hands on experience of this device, shot on video -

The LG G Watch comes in two colours, black and white, with respect to the straps. The one above is White-gold, with the gold accents being displayed on the body.

The design is a bit bland, as you can see from this photo. The watch is a solid piece of plastic, with a strip of gold coloured metal between the two pieces of the casing that encloses everything inside.

Over at the back, we have the charging connectors that magnetically connects to the charging cradle, which, the LG rep says, is almost effortless. The 400 mAH battery inside will charge to 90% in 30 minutes flat and then slowly charge to 100% in 2 hours, which is actually quite useful for this kind of a device.

Sporting a 1.65″ touchscreen, the LCD screen here sports a resolution of 280×280, a bit lesser than the Gear Live at 320×320. It is powered by a Snapdragon 400 1.2 GHz Quad Core processor underneath, with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage.

Running Android Wear, the watch will be able to connect with all Android devices running 4.3 Jellybean or higher, with Google Now cards support and more. The one you see above is a Google Now card for flight alerts, which will prove really useful, we feel.