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HOW TO<br />
choose which apps can send notifications to your watch, including<br />
‘rich Gmail notifications’.<br />
Disadvantages compared to Apple Watch<br />
While there’s some integration with iOS, it’s not deep enough to be<br />
useful. The Apple Watch has access to areas of iOS that Android<br />
Wear doesn’t, so you’re not going to be able to use Siri or other<br />
features. Worse still, you won’t be able to use some Android Wear<br />
features. Not only is there a more limited selection of watch faces<br />
(we were using the LG Watch Urbane with an iPhone 6 Plus), but<br />
you can’t install apps. That’s right – it’s not possible to install any<br />
extra apps on your Wear smartwatch when used with an iPhone.<br />
Notifications on Android Wear (and the Apple Watch) are<br />
generally a bit limited. Thanks to APIs, app makers can add actions<br />
you can use to respond to notifications. But there’s more bad news<br />
in the Wear-iPhone partnership: those custom actions don’t exist.<br />
You can merely dismiss or block the notification.<br />
Things are little better with Google’s own apps, as you can<br />
archive, delete or reply to Gmails. Replies are dictated using Google<br />
Now, or you can draw on the screen to search for a suitable emoji.<br />
But the more you use your watch, the more limitations you’ll<br />
find. While you can use Google Now to do many things, from<br />
translating words to converting weights and measures, you<br />
can’t say “give me directions to the British Library” and get turn<br />
directions on your wrist. And when you set reminders, these don’t<br />
appear in the iOS Reminders app. Similarly, your agenda is only<br />
what’s in your Google calendar, not your Apple/iCloud account.<br />
Apple is never going to allow third parties to have the same<br />
feature set as the Apple Watch, nor integration with its own<br />
services including iMessage. For this reason, and the fact an<br />
Android Wear watch will be bereft of extra apps, it will always be<br />
a better partner for an Android phone.<br />
The bottom line is that unless you just happen to have a Wear<br />
device lying around, please don’t go out and buy one thinking you’ll<br />
have a great experience when you pair it with your iPhone. J<br />
LG WATCH URBANE<br />
February 2016 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to 113
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