Google announced Android 5.0 Lollipop earlier this year with official roll-out begin last month. Now, Google has started rolling out a massive update for Android Wear platform, Android Wear Lollipop update. The Android 5.0 update will bring several new features to the platform. Earlier this year, when Google launched the Android Wear platform for wearable devices, it said that the custom watch face API is also a part of this update.
Well, the watch faces will be made available in the Play Store via a new section to make it easier to find them. There will be numerous such watch faces from designers including Craig Ward, Hugh Turvey and Rebecca Minkoff available at the time of launch. Users can also avail licensed watch faces from Pac Man, Plants vs. Zombies, The Despicable Me, Porsche, RedBull and others.
Besides watch faces, Google has also included following set of features, which include:
- Quickly bring a card back if you've accidentally dismissed it
- When you tap on the watch face, recently used actions now appear at the top of the list
- Quickly access various settings by swiping down from the top of the screen
- Theater Mode lets you keep the screen off and mute vibrations when you're in a dark room
- Sunlight Mode temporarily boosts the screen to maximum brightness
- Easily block notifications from any app, directly from your watch
- View your apps’ usage of battery and storage (in the Android Wear app)
Google has also released the official watch face API for developers to create custom watch faces. Following this update to Android Wear, developers of custom watch faces are urged to update their products with the official API by January 31, 2015 or they will be removed from Play Store, claims Google.
Some popular watch face applications like Speeds Watch Face and Facer have already received the update with the support for official API. But, most developers have not been provided with early access for this.
To be updated...