So here's my initial take on Wear 2.0:
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other." This is an old Jamaican phrase I used to a lot to refer to, among other things, more of the same.
I used it today on a test run to an initial interview. Here's the deal for me:
Pros - Seems to run a bit faster, less swiping in some spots, better usage of the screen layout in some areas. You can see Google put some work in to try to tweak the UI. You also get a sense there is a little bit more choice in how to use the UI as well.
Cons - Lost a lot of the information access at a glance/notification/voice driven aspect. I think Google was already pairing back from the voice driven input to some degree.
For all the tweaking in some spots to access some features faster, I still gotta dig for some stuff. For example, if I'm playing music on the phone, Wear 1.5 gives you the option of either pinning a card on the main screen for access or keeping it off screen where you swipe up to be able to pause and then swipe right to access volume, previous and next. Now, on Wear 2.0, because the notifications are now full screen, you have the convenience of having the previous + next + pause on one screen and volume one tap away. But because the system doesn't triage active notifications as priority any more, playing music puts it at the bottom of the pile (so you're scrolling multiple times to get to it).
With Wear 1.5, active notifications are triaged a little better, so if a text or an email comes in, it bumps the active music app down the list, but once you address that, the active music app goes up at the top of the notifications list. This allows a cleaner look where you can use your whole watch face (analog, digital or custom) or you can chop that look slightly just to have faster access to the music app. In Wear 2.0, the music controls if the app is active can be in your always on screen which is convenient, but that limits you to only the digital clock that comes on the top half of the music controls notification.
I hate how they screwed up the DND mode. That on Wear 1.5 triggered a silent mode on both the watch and phone. On Wear 2.0, you've got to put the phone and the watch in DND separately. Now, the drawback with the Wear 1.5 DND mode is I couldn't get audio output (listen music or watch a video and get sound with phone in DND mode), but that DND mode is nice for my line of work... especially with the vibration motor on the Huawei watch bone rattling loud. I'd rather them add that mode back under a different name. I also don't like the idea of the app push where now you've got to update the apps on the watch separately. On WiFi that obviously runs faster, and in Bluetooth it's a pain.
Who was the knucklehead who decided reading threaded text messages at the bottom for new replies was a good idea? Under Wear 1.5, you saw the newest message at the top of the thread first. Now you have to read through all the old messages to get to the new stuff at the bottom. Yeah, really smart on that one. I'm better off pulling out my phone instead of super scrolling on my wrist like an ***.
Meh - switching from white to grey as the dominant design color; adding a keyboard as an input option; adding an app store; Google Assistant on the watch.
TBD: battery life.
My biggest issue is how Google is currently shaping this as an IoT important category. Clearly these changes are pushed to have watches run without using internet via the phone. Both my watches are likely obsolete next year...but the problem is there isn't enough to push OEMs to make new hardware. We'll see how the year ends, but this feels like more of the same.
I just think that without the right mix of hardware and better tweaked software, people won't buy Wear devices. Plus Google's rollout of 2.0 to the older watches was handled "hella horribly".
So I'll keep the Huawei watch on 2.0 and the Moto 360 on 1.5 for now.
06-01-2017 04:35 PM
