Google is not going to sit around and watch the rest of the mobile world come up with a product and not get into the same market. The smartwatch is one thing that Google has not talked about very much since the Galaxy Gear from Samsung was announced last month, but that is about to change according to reports. Google is reportedly working on a smartwatch design that will be “able to communicate with other devices such as a smartphone”, seemingly about the same thing that Samsung just released.
The Galaxy Gear is a watch with limited specs that can communicate in various ways with your smartphone or phablet device without you having to hold the device. Notifications, telephone calls and text messages can all be received by the smartwatch, which is communicating via Bluetooth to your main device. The Google smartwatch is not going to be much different than that and as expected Google is going to up the ante with better battery life and other built in features hoping to out-shine the competition. The Galaxy Gear will go about 25 hours without charging, which seems like a lot, but should really be much more for such a limited device.
Even though the Galaxy Gear will support a handful of devices, the Google version could be compatible with all Android powered devices, including Samsung’s making it more useful for those that have more than one Android device from different companies. The smartwatch could also just be for Nexus branded devices at the same time, which would limit the use, but make the most sense when it comes to configuration and such. Google Now is likely to be a large focus for the smartwatch providing weather, sports scores, travel and stock information at a glance.
Samsung was the first company to release an official smartwatch, even though Pebble was already on the market and could be considered a smartwatch to some degree although more limited. Samsung brought the smartwatch to the market showing exactly what the device would do and leaving plenty of room for expansion and upgrades. Google has no timeline for the new smartwatch, or a name, or even what the device is going to do exactly, but all of that information should be available over the next couple months.
