iOS support officially comes to Android Wear
Huawei’s little mix-up might have been shrugged off as inaccurate, but at least one detail in their Amazon listing for the Huawei Watch was true: iOS support is coming to Android Wear! Google has just made the news official over at their blog.
Android Wear can now work with the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, or 6 Plus running iOS 8.2 or higher. That’s not a terribly long list of Apple devices, though it does cover three years of hardware and whatever else the bitten fruit company is launching this year.
Another list that isn’t terribly long for now is the list of smart watches that are actually going to support iOS. The LG Watch Urbane sits on that list alone from today, with all future Android Wear smart watches promised to be added.
Google didn’t give a great reason as to why this limitation is in place:
“We wanted to make sure that iOS users would have a great experience with Android Wear out of the box. We’ve worked with manufacturers to ensure that the newest watches work really well with modern iPhones, but last year’s watches aren’t technically supported.”
Funny, that, considering the LG Watch Urbane and the LG G Watch R are practically identical under the hood. We wouldn’t be surprised if there are other, more devious factors keeping older watches from being “technically supported” (such as wanting to push sales for only the newest smart watches), but this is all Google had to offer up in regards to an explanation. Fingers crossed that the development community can find a way to bypass the “limitations” that Google couldn’t.
In any case, the support is finally here, so those who’ve been lusting over an Android Wear watch but couldn’t use one due to being an iPhone user, today’s your day. Go ahead and buy an LG Watch Urbane, or wait for some of the newer options to drop later this year.