Apple Watch vs Android Wear: Smartwatch OS Comparison

How do Apple and Google's smartwatch platforms compare?

Moto 360 aside, the Apple Watch has been the most talked about 'other' smartwatch. As expected, Apple saved it as its 'one last thing' to announce alongside the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and hopes you will be wrapping it around your wrist when it goes on sale next year.

It’s going to be playing catch up with Google and its growing army of Android Wear smartwatches, so where should you spend your money now that Apple has laid down the smartwatch gauntlet?

We compare the Apple smartwatch with the Android Wear operating system running inside the likes of the Samsung Gear S, LG Watch R and the Moto 360 to see how they match up.

Apple Watch vs Android Wear: Design and User Interface

One of the most attractive features of Android Wear is the Google Now-inspired user interface. It’s the same clean, card-based look used for the intelligent virtual assistant on phones and tablets, which is a great fit for small displays. But as pretty as it looks on a G Watch, Gear Live and the rest, it still needs some tweaking. Android Wear doesn’t have multiple homescreens or app folders, so it’s not entirely the same experience as Android on a phone or a tablet. There’s third-party apps that can rectify this to some extent, but they are still buggy solutions.

Apple is using a custom user interface here as well, so it’s not simply iOS 8 shrunk down to fit into a small screen. Initially there appear to be some similarities with Android Wear like the fact there’s a homescreen and it utilizes some of the same gestures. Unlike Android Wear, all of the apps live on the main homescreen so you don’t have dig around in the settings or use voice search to find them like you do on Android Wear. Quite how that works when you've got hundreds on there, it's not entirely clear though.

SEE ALSO: iPhone 6 vs iPhone 6 Plus

iWatch vs Android Wear: Controls

Android Wear uses many of the same gestures you use on your smartphone, so you can swipe and press to interact, although there’s no pinch and zoom or multi-touch support at the moment. This is consistent across Android Wear watches. Where Android Wear does make a big push is voice control. Yes, you need to talk to your wrist. Say the words ‘Okay, Google’ and you are ready to ask your watch useful things like how to get to the museum or more useless things like how many Police Academy films have ever been made.

Apple doesn’t place as much importance on voice control, but does include similar gestures and has built-in Siri support. You can swipe to navigate and tap on an app to launch apps. Raising your wrist will let you view notifications. Apple introduces a feature called Glances, which you can swipe from the bottom of the screen to see notifications you can then act on using taps and swipes. With Siri you can quickly reply to texts, for example, and the watch will even analyse texts to give quicker more useful answers.

Another unique control feature is Force Touch, which Apple says works like the right click on the mouse and allows users to customize watch faces. Where it differs greatly from Android Wear is the use of Apple is calling the 'Digital Crown'. This is the physical dial on the side of the watch. You can twist it to zoom in and out, scroll and select, which is handy for apps like maps and photos. This is something no smartwatch maker has really utilized.

SEE ALSO: iPhone 6 vs iPhone 5S

iWatch vs Android Wear: Features

Android Wear’s key features are driven by your phone along with Google Now and Google Voice Search. The likes of the Moto 360 and the Gear Live still rely on your smartphone to get the optimum experience because essentially they are still companion devices. Android Wear will only work with Android devices as well. That means harnessing location data, GPS information and pulling in notifications from apps like Twitter or Facebook and feeding them through to your watch over Bluetooth. 

That’s changing, though. Google recently announced a new Android Wear update, which will bring offline music playback and GPS support without the phone. The Samsung Gear S, for example, also includes GPS and built-in SIM card support, so you are not entirely tied to your Android smartphone.

To state the obvious, you need to use an iPhone to be able to use the Apple Watch and will work with iPhone 5 upwards. Much like Android Wear watches, the Apple Watch harnesses many of the features available through your smartphone like GPS and the accelerometer. A feature that is built-in is something it's calling the Taptic Engine. This provides a subtle vibration you feel on your wrist for notifications. One ingenious application of this system is in step-by-step navigation, where Apple claims the feedback will tell which direction you need to turn. It's a feature that sounds great, but only if it works reliably.

With the confirmation it will support the Apple Pay mobile payments platform, the Apple Watch should also include NFC. Other nice features include the ability to play nice with Apple TV as a remote and can be as a viewfinder for the iPhone camera.

SEE ALSO: iPhone 5S vs Galaxy S5

Apple Watch vs Android Wear: Apps

The Android Wear app store is still growing and makes a good start with a diverse collection of first and third party apps. Annoyingly, there’s only a dedicated store available through the Android Wear application on your phone, which you need to install in the first place to set the watch up. You can’t simply browse the web version of the Google Play store, for instance.

Although Apple hasn’t talked about a dedicated app store as it was rumoured, it did announce WatchKit, a developer platform for the Apple Watch. There's scope to use the watch to unlock hotel rooms and even store airline flight information Passbook style. It did still have time to show off some native apps like Maps and Photos, where you can zoom in and out of using the crown dial. The Apple Watch will also have its own dedicated communication app called digital touch. Again there's plenty of potential here and hopefully by the time it launches, there will be be plenty of apps to choose from.

SEE ALSO: Best Android Wear Apps

Apple Watch vs Android Wear: Health and Fitness

Fitness is a big play for Google with the introduction of its Google Fit platform. Depending on which Android Wear smartwatch you go for, all are capable of taking data from fitness apps and collecting them in the Google Fit application. All of the Android Wear smartwatches currently available include pedometers with the Moto 360 and the Gear S also additionally including heart rate sensors.

Apple HealthKit is a big part of iOS 8 and unsurprisingly there’s plenty of new fitness features and apps to look forward to on the Apple Watch. At the back of the watch you'll find an array of sensors around the back, which can read heart rate and send a vibration to the watch as you raise the intensity of your workout. It also uses the gyroscope, accelerometer and GPS to increase tracking capabilities so you don’t have to glance at your phone.  There’s even a dedicated Fitness and Workout apps to measure calories, duration and distance.

SEE ALSO: What is HealthKit?

iWatch vs Android Wear: Battery Life

This can of course depend on the Android Wear watch you go for, but as thing stand, no company making an Android Wear smartwatch has been able to promise more than a day and half of battery life. This means you are going to need to charge it the same amount as most smartphones.

Worst of all, in most cases is that you require a proprietary charging cradle to power it up so if you stay round someone’s house and forget to charge it, you are without your smartwatch for at least a day. The Moto 360 does include wireless charging but that still doesn’t detract from the fact you will have to charge it every night.

There was no word on battery life for the Apple Watch, so there’s a real likelihood it could be in the same ball park as Android Wear watches. It does support wireless inductive charging at least so that is some consolation, albeit a scant one if battery life is on the average side. And, of course, it's another dedicated charger to deal with.

Early Verdict

As we’ve spoken in great detail in our Android Wear review, Google's operating system shows great promise and along with Pebble’s OS still provides the most convincing argument that smartwatches can become as valuable as phones. But that great potential is tinged by plenty of pain points and awkwardness.

Now Apple has joined the party, it is posed with the same problems. We still don't know all the full details about the operating system and there's clearly some similarities here with Android Wear. We need to spend some time to get a true sense of how it works on a small screen. There's certainly some exciting features here and it has all the ingredients to make the Apple Watch the best smartwatch, but we'll have to wait for the 2015 launch to know for certain.