In May, ‘s developer advocate for Android ar, posted screenshots of some Android ar notifications in action. Now, othy is back with another look at how Android ar will work. This time he’s spelling out what we’ve seen from previous blog posts promotional videos.
The impetus for Android ar is—like Glass—to make it easier to interact with information from your smartphone. says the typical way we interact with our phone can be cumbersome at times. You have to pull out your phone, unlock it, find the app you want, launch it, then search out the information you’re looking for. th ar the idea is to glance at your wrist you’re done.
ile developers will be able to create apps for ar, don’t expect to see the icon grid we’re used to using on smartphones. “If we put these same shiny objects [app icons] on a wearable, well, it just doesn’t make sense,” said.
Searching for apps on a watch, according to , defeats Android ar’s primary purpose to deliver “simple, glanceable” information.
Instead, you’ll use ar to get notifications from smartphone apps, most of which will work on day one with no extra coding from developers.
But if apps want to get fancy with stackable notifications that bundle multiple alerts from one app together—a feature dubbed Stacks—it will require a few extra lines of code.
Other extra additions that need developer retooling will include ges, which are multiple cards that can deliver more information for a single notification. could, for example, use ges to display a Keep checklist tied to a reminder alert. Developers can also add Replies, which let you reply to notifications right from your watch using voice interaction.
As for Android ar-specific apps, developers will be able to create customized card layouts; swap data between the wearable a tablet or smartphone; gather display data from the wearable’s sensors.
Android ar apps can also become default apps for voice comms like “OK , take a note.”
The first Android ar devices such as the Moto 360 ‘s G tch are expected to debut this summer, that may happen sooner rather than later. Saturday is the official start to summer with I/O kicking off on dnesday, we just might see a few Android ar announcements during the developer conference.