Huawei unveiled its Android Wear-powered Huawei Watch at Mobile World Congress. While it drew positive first impressions, Huawei is calling on Google to make Android Wear more customizeable so that users can feel that “it’s their own watch, not a standard watch.”
Speaking with TrustedReviews, Yang Yong, Huawei’s Vice President of Product Management, said, “We wish [we had more freedom to customise the Android Wear platform].”
While manufacturers have a large degree of freedom on the hardware side, the same cannot be said about the software. Interchangeable watch faces are about all that they can change as the rest of the user interface cannot be skinned nor can menus be changed. It makes for a very homogeneous experience across all Android Wear devices. ““Android Wear is not as open as Android. For the watch it cannot be a standard,” Yang argues, adding, “We need to communicate with Google how we can do that.”
Much as we see in the traditional watch face, Yang suggests that smartwatch users have “different appetites for the watch.” It is not enough to offer differentiation at the hardware level to meet those different needs. Doing so at the software level is needed to broaden interest and “to appeal to the consumers who will use it.”
Google has yet to give any sign that it is ready to make Android Wear more customizeable. The next version of its wearables operating system is expected to add features such as native Wi-Fi support and gesture control but there is no sign of any features that would allow manufacturers from tinkering with it to distinguish their devices from those of the competition beyond different watch faces.
Source : TrustedReviews