TIMOTHY JORDAN: It goes all the way to 11.
That's great.
So I'm here with David Singleton,
VP of Engineering for Android Wear,
and he's going to catch us up on all the latest
things with Android Wear.
DAVID SINGLETON: Thanks, Timothy.
Yeah, so it's great to be back here again at Google
I/O in the wonderful sunshine.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Every year.
DAVID SINGLETON: Every year, every year it's sunny.
So what's new with Android Wear?
Earlier this year, we launched Android Wear 2.0,
which is our biggest update to the platform since we launched,
all the way back at Google I/O in 2014.
And with that update, we were really
focused on making some of the things
that we see people do most with their watches
better and faster.
So we start with watch faces.
Obviously, we all love to have watch faces that
express our style.
But actually, what we're finding is
that people love to have information that really matters
to them, right there at a glance throughout the day.
So we made it possible for developers
to put data from their apps onto any watch face
that the user might choose.
And for users, that's really powerful because it
means you can have a watch face that matches your style,
but has that information from the apps that you love.
We made major updates to the system UI,
to make things like messaging much more fluid and fast.
And then finally, we completely revamped the fitness experience
with Android Wear 2.0.
So with 2.0 having come out earlier this year, what
we are talking about I/O this year is a lot of new stuff
that we're building for developers.
And during the keynote, we shared some of the momentum
that we're seeing for Android Wear in the category, which
we're really excited about.
We shared during the keynote that we now
will see 24 brands right now that have Android Wear watches.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
DAVID SINGLETON: And we didn't say this in the keynote,
but that means there are actually
46 different Android Wear watches you
can choose from right now.
And right from the beginning, we felt
like it's really important for a product
that you wear right on your body to be somewhere
that you can express your personal style and passion.
And so having that choice of devices, we think,
is a tremendous testament to that.
Some of the ones I'm most excited about,
Tag Heuer just launched their second generation product
which is called the Tag Heuer Modular 45.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: I haven't seen one yet, is it amazing?
DAVID SINGLETON: So you should take yourself into our sandbox,
you can see.
The best thing with this product is
there are all kinds of variations.
You can swap out everything from the bracelet
to the little horns to the bezel on the watch,
and really create a look that's very personal to you.
And it also has watch faces that are
personally customizable to match all of that.
We're also working with some new partners for the first time
this year.
So Movado, earlier in the year, announced their product,
and it's really exciting to see the kind of minimalist design
that they bring to their watch.
And then some of our other fashion partners,
like Michael Kors, for instance, have updated their lineup
with a new product called the Michael Kors Access Grayson,
and one called Sophie, which you can see inside,
which is a really nice, small watch, which I'm really excited
will take the product forward for women in particular.
So we're seeing this really tremendous momentum.
And actually, that began before Android Wear 2.0.
So when we look at our new device activations
for the holiday season last year,
we actually saw 72% growth on the year before.
And with Wear 2.0 coming and all those new devices,
we're really excited that that momentum will continue
through this year and beyond.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
Let's talk a little bit about fitness.
It's one of the areas that I'm most excited
about with smart watches in general, right.
What are some of the new devices and some of the features
there that you see users really engaging with?
DAVID SINGLETON: Yeah, thanks for the question.
One of the things that we did with Wear 2.0
was completely revamp the fitness experience.
And one of the things that we really see
is that what people want to do with their watches
fall into two buckets, two distinct kinds of use case.
So one is I'm actually like, working out right now,
and I want to track it right on my wrist.
So we call that fit active mode.
You can start fit activity, you can use all the sensors
on the product--
maybe you're running or cycling--
to see exactly how hard you're working, use your heart rate,
compute things like your distance and calories burned.
The other kind of experience is just
using the product to set some goals that matter to you.
Maybe I just want to be more active
and I want to be active perhaps for one hour every day.
Set that goal and then just go and live your life.
The watch automatically keeps track of your movement,
so we can see how many minutes of the day
you really were active.
And by seeing that at a glance on any of those watch faces,
it really helps me be more active through the day.
And you'll see that right there on the watch I'm wearing now.
So we find that tremendously powerful.
But also, smart watches with beautiful and vibrant screens,
like Android Wear devices, are a great place to coach the user.
And so with the update that we recently launched,
we introduced challenges, where you can do things
like sit-ups and push-ups.
And the watch will actually show you exactly how to do them.
And then it will use the sensors in the watch
to see how many you did and are you doing them
with the correct form.
And that's really cool, because it means that there's
kind of no cheating.
You can't say, yeah I did my push-ups.
It is actually going to count them for you.
And you're going to do more every day.
And it really helps keep you motivated.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
DAVID SINGLETON: I'd love to tell you
a bit about what we have new for developers
that we're talking about at I/O this year.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: I was going to ask that next.
DAVID SINGLETON: So we're really excited to build on the things
that we're seeing developers do with the Wear 2.0 platform.
And in particular, let's talk about watch faces.
So I already mentioned that we have the Complications
API that lets your app put data on any watch face.
But if we turned it around to the watch face developers,
they can take those data and actually
render them in any format that fits the aesthetic style
of the watch face.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Now that's cool.
DAVID SINGLETON: And that is cool,
because it means that you can have a watch face that really
represents the particular visual graphic design,
or whatever it is that you really care about.
But some of our watch face developers
have told us that they actually find it quite challenging
to take all of the different kinds of data
that apps could provide and render them in an enchanting
fashion for their users.
So we're making this easier.
We are launching several things here
at Google I/O that mean that, if you a watch face developer
and you're dealing with this data coming from apps,
you can render it really easily in an enchanting form.
So one is a text rendering system
that allows you to fit text into any size region on the screen,
and it will automatically resize.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's one of those things that's
not as trivial as you would think it would be.
DAVID SINGLETON: That's right.
It actually took a lot of work to make this work really well.
And then beyond that, we have something
called complication drawable.
And that means that the system will actually
take care of rendering the complication data right
where you tell us.
And then we provide some APIs that allow you to style it,
so it can still fit with the visual flow of your watch face.
And then beyond watch faces, we're
also taking a lot of the work that we've
done to build UI components and going through the process
of open sourcing it.
So it will be able to be evolved faster
and you'll also be able to understand exactly how it
works as a developer.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: It's very cool.
All right, so what are some good next steps?
What are some things that developers can play with today?
DAVID SINGLETON: So today, you can go ahead
to the Android Wear website and you can download the SDK.
You can try out all of the new APIs I just talked about.
They are live on GitHub right now, or as
of four minutes from now.
So take yourself over there and have fun building watch faces
that use the complication API.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
David, thank you so much.
DAVID SINGLETON: Thank you.
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