This is a Huawei Watch and this is an iPhone. About two and a half weeks ago, this would have never worked, but now it magically does. So I’m here to talk to you guys about how the experience of Android Wear devices work on iPhones and compare them to my experience of using Android Wear devices on Android phones and the Apple Watch on the Apple iPhone.
The first thing I want to talk about is the pairing experience. And overall, it’s pretty simple. It’s very similar to the very experience you have on Android with an Android Wear watch. You basically put in a PIN code and there — it’s connected. Very simple and very easy.
The experience, however, is a little bit different compared to your Android Wear experience whenever you’re using it with an Android phone. Aesthetically, it looks pretty much exactly the same. You have basically all the same settings and functions. The only problem is: there are no built-in APIs that let you respond to some of the notifications. For example, you get a Twitter notification. If you had it connected to an Android phone, you probably had the ability to reply to that notification. When you’re using an iPhone with an Android Wear watch, you basically have the ability to block that application from sending you notifications.
For the time being, Gmail is basically the only application that lets you reply to some kind of email. But when we’re talking about any other third party application, there’s just no support or built-in APIs that let you talk from the Watch to the phone.
So basically, the experience with Android Wear on iOS is a simple notification delivery system. One thing that I’ve noticed is if you don’t have the Android Wear application open on your iOS and running in the background, it is a little bit spottier. So I like to have it open. I just don’t close the application. I know that’s a little weird and it will cause a little bit more battery drain on your iPhone. But to have the best response and best experience with Android Wear on iOS, I would recommend you to keep that application running in the background.
And to be completely honest with you, only having a notification delivery system is not all too bad because even on my Apple Watch or even on an Android Wear device that I’m using with an Android phone, I normally just use it as a notification delivery system. It sends me notifications with little buzzes on my wrist and I check it for time and that’s basically it. I’m not doing any kind of hardcore computing on the Android Wear device. I don’t do that on an Apple Watch because simply the screen is not big enough.
So that’s basically the experience of Android Wear on iOS. Hopefully there’s going to be some more built-in APIs and third party applications. Obviously, that’s not going to be coming through the Apple App Store but Google might incorporate it in App Store or some kind of system inside the Android Wear application for iOS as a delivery system. Hopefully that will happen in the near future.
If you want to check it out, if you want a replacement and you just want to check out a smartwatch without shelling out a lot of money on an Apple Watch if you have an iPhone, you might want to give it a try.