Android Wear: What went wrong?
The first watches with Android Wear on board began to arrive on the shelves of Russian stores, collecting press reviews and first buyers along the way. What did we get? I consider this review indicative of the notorious Eldar Murtazin:
Even an experienced geeky journalist with a great predilection for wearable gadgets does not look at least interested in the new class of devices from Google. What about loyal Android first buyers? Also not very impressed with the acquisition:
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The average users of tablets and smartphones does not even look at Android Wear. What are the main problems of the watch?
- Problem one: The clock is useless for most buyers.
The whole ideology of Android Wear is based on two things - Google Now and alerts from the phone. If you have ever used Google Now, you noticed that the service only works in very specific cases: the road to the airport, watching the movie theater posters, viewing traffic jams to work. Even in these rare cases, information is needed to view only 3-4 times during the day. What prevents people from checking this information from their phone is unclear.
With alerts, the situation is a bit more interesting. If you look at how people use phones, then you can see one very obvious fact: people almost do not release smartphones from their hands. They go to the toilet with them, put them on a table in a cafe, run with them, and God knows what else they do.
Let's look at the amusing statistics:
- 20% of young people do not part with smartphones even during sex;
- 70% of tablet owners use them while watching TV.
To hold the device in the hands has become an everyday habit, conditional disposal of which will not become a motivator for the purchase of the device, because people will not even think about it.
In theory, smart watches have an advantage where it is difficult to take a smartphone, but the ideology of current devices is extremely hindering at least some work from the smartphone. In certain situations, people would prefer to take only the watch with them, leaving the phone in a safe place. If you have ever been in a large water park, you will understand me.
Problem two: The clock is ugly
For wearable electronics, there can be only two options: either the device is stylish, or indispensable. The device hanging on the wrist is extremely noticeable when wearing clothes with short sleeves, so that the second option disappears. Here is what we have now:
The watches look like cheap Chinese toys, which cannot boast of any interesting design. “But what about the Moto 360?” You ask. The device is extremely large and has a specific appearance. I can not imagine a fragile girl with such a watch, well, or an athlete in the gym:
Problem three: How does it work at all ?!
Let's keep it clean, in some situations, voice control is unacceptable. A lecture, a library, meetings or any other situation where you have to be in silence makes you interact with Android Wear solely using the screen. For starters, you obviously cannot reply to a message or enter a search query. And if for some reason you need to open a third-party application, then welcome to the holiday of non-intuitive interfaces, compared to which Windows 8 is just the top of usability. Watch your hands: In order to open the settings, you need to click on the search button (?) And scroll through the list of all available actions on the watch to the end. An ordinary user with such charm simply can not figure it out. True, desperate developers have already begun to create the first lunch for Android Wear, only they work extremely crookedly.
What to do with Android Wear?
Despite the problems outlined above, the platform will evolve over time. Strategic task for Google, and the industry as a whole, will be to report the benefits of smart watches to ordinary consumers. It is necessary to make the interface more intuitive, to allow the watch to connect to mobile networks without a smartphone (we're talking about the Internet of things, isn't it?), As well as to increase the variety of shapes and sizes of watches. The key role, I think, will be played here by third-party developers who will be able to more flexibly adapt real user requests to Google watches.
Ps. Until now, the most simple to use for consumers wearable, so to speak, the device remains the iPod Nano 6G. It is enough just to explain to the buyer that the “clock” allows you to listen to music without having to carry the phone in your pocket or any case. Interestingly, Apple will show in October and whether they can convince customers again.
Even an experienced geeky journalist with a great predilection for wearable gadgets does not look at least interested in the new class of devices from Google. What about loyal Android first buyers? Also not very impressed with the acquisition:
')
The average users of tablets and smartphones does not even look at Android Wear. What are the main problems of the watch?
- Problem one: The clock is useless for most buyers.
The whole ideology of Android Wear is based on two things - Google Now and alerts from the phone. If you have ever used Google Now, you noticed that the service only works in very specific cases: the road to the airport, watching the movie theater posters, viewing traffic jams to work. Even in these rare cases, information is needed to view only 3-4 times during the day. What prevents people from checking this information from their phone is unclear.
With alerts, the situation is a bit more interesting. If you look at how people use phones, then you can see one very obvious fact: people almost do not release smartphones from their hands. They go to the toilet with them, put them on a table in a cafe, run with them, and God knows what else they do.
Let's look at the amusing statistics:
- 20% of young people do not part with smartphones even during sex;
- 70% of tablet owners use them while watching TV.
To hold the device in the hands has become an everyday habit, conditional disposal of which will not become a motivator for the purchase of the device, because people will not even think about it.
In theory, smart watches have an advantage where it is difficult to take a smartphone, but the ideology of current devices is extremely hindering at least some work from the smartphone. In certain situations, people would prefer to take only the watch with them, leaving the phone in a safe place. If you have ever been in a large water park, you will understand me.
Problem two: The clock is ugly
For wearable electronics, there can be only two options: either the device is stylish, or indispensable. The device hanging on the wrist is extremely noticeable when wearing clothes with short sleeves, so that the second option disappears. Here is what we have now:
The watches look like cheap Chinese toys, which cannot boast of any interesting design. “But what about the Moto 360?” You ask. The device is extremely large and has a specific appearance. I can not imagine a fragile girl with such a watch, well, or an athlete in the gym:
Problem three: How does it work at all ?!
Let's keep it clean, in some situations, voice control is unacceptable. A lecture, a library, meetings or any other situation where you have to be in silence makes you interact with Android Wear solely using the screen. For starters, you obviously cannot reply to a message or enter a search query. And if for some reason you need to open a third-party application, then welcome to the holiday of non-intuitive interfaces, compared to which Windows 8 is just the top of usability. Watch your hands: In order to open the settings, you need to click on the search button (?) And scroll through the list of all available actions on the watch to the end. An ordinary user with such charm simply can not figure it out. True, desperate developers have already begun to create the first lunch for Android Wear, only they work extremely crookedly.
What to do with Android Wear?
Despite the problems outlined above, the platform will evolve over time. Strategic task for Google, and the industry as a whole, will be to report the benefits of smart watches to ordinary consumers. It is necessary to make the interface more intuitive, to allow the watch to connect to mobile networks without a smartphone (we're talking about the Internet of things, isn't it?), As well as to increase the variety of shapes and sizes of watches. The key role, I think, will be played here by third-party developers who will be able to more flexibly adapt real user requests to Google watches.
Ps. Until now, the most simple to use for consumers wearable, so to speak, the device remains the iPod Nano 6G. It is enough just to explain to the buyer that the “clock” allows you to listen to music without having to carry the phone in your pocket or any case. Interestingly, Apple will show in October and whether they can convince customers again.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/229857/
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