Mastering Android Wear Application Development

Wearable computing, although widely believed to be the latest technological innovation, had existed even during the days of the abacus, a calculating tool that was used centuries ago by merchants and traders. According to a historical source on Chinese culture, it is believed that an abacus inlaid in a ring was used as a calculator during the Qing dynasty (http://www.chinaculture.org/classics/2010-04/20/content_383263_4.htm):

A relatively recent modern form of wearable computing devices is the Casio Databank. It's a series of electronic wristwatches manufactured by Casio during the early 1980s that were bundled with features such as a calculator, timer, world clock, contact management, and also a remote control for TV and VCR.

It was very popular and was considered a technological marvel of that time. It was very convenient compared to the manual or simple digital watches that were available during that time. It was not only used for checking the time and setting up alarms but also helped with utility functions such as calculating something fast on the fly or for recalling stored contact information:

Innovators and inventors have always been fascinated with bringing technology and lifestyle as close together as possible. Whether it's the Burton Amp jacket, which is believed to the first known modern wearable device for controlling iPods, or the latest wearable device called Whistle that is used by pet owners for tracking their pet's location and activity, wearable devices are becoming commonplaces.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted 50 years ago that the number of transistors fitted into smaller integrated circuits would be doubled approximately every two years. That was the baseline for the explosive growth of computing powers. The size of the electronic components slowly became smaller and the processing power of the devices got stronger as time went by.

The mainframe computers, used in the early 1960s and 1970s to run enterprises and large corporations, occupied the size of a living room. They subsequently shrunk to mid-range servers and desktop computers. Integrated circuit chips and microprocessors used in computers got more and more powerful, the size of the storage devices got much smaller, and the size of the storage capacity got increased.

Desktop computers slowly transformed to become more portable in the form of laptops and notebook computers. Laptop computers are equipped with a rechargeable battery that can let users work on their computers for their personal or business needs whenever and wherever they wanted.

The Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is used as the mobile computing device for managing contacts and performing some basic business-related tasks.

Then came the era of smartphones. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, there were some smartphones already available on the market. However, the introduction of iPhones by Apple and the subsequent launch of the Android platform by Google led the way to strong and healthy competition in the smartphone industry.

What we are seeing now in the wearable devices trend is history repeating itself. But this time, Google took an early lead in launching the Android Wear platform in 2014, whereas Apple announced its first wearable watch in April 2015.

Major companies such as Samsung, LG, Pebble, and Jawbone have all jumped onto this bandwagon with varieties of wearable device available on the market already.

Ubiquitous computing is a computing paradigm where the human interaction with a computer happens anywhere and everywhere and through any device around them. Let's say, for example, that you are working on an important business proposal using your office desktop computer and you are almost done with your proposal document, but it's time to leave the office and pick up your kid from school and take her to swimming practice. You left work, picked up your kid, and took her to the swimming school. While she is doing her swimming practice, you continue to work on the business proposal from where you left off using your smartphone and send the document to the client just before she is done with the swimming practice.

While you are driving home, you get a response e-mail from the client. The computer integrated into the car you are driving is equipped with an app or system like Siri or Alexa that reads the e-mail message you received from the client out loud. And when you reach home, you respond to the client's business proposal using your smartwatch and even set up a date and place for the next meeting.

This example might sound a little exaggerated, but the important point to make here is that it's not the technology taking over human lives, it's the humans doing what they want to do whenever and wherever, seamlessly, and using simple interactions. The devices around them would help them do what they want to do without knowing or feeling that they do. That is the foundation philosophy of ubiquitous computing. It just lets you do things wherever you need to without asking or needing to know if that can be done there.

Human interaction with a computing device can be pervasive and it can happen without even knowing that it happens.

Technologies such as cloud computing and wireless communication protocols and standards such as Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Near Field Communications (NFC), Radio Frequency Identifications (RFID), and ZigBee make such interactions with devices possible by forming the infrastructure needed for all these devices to communicate with each other and build the contexts needed.

Application developers, designers, and service providers should design their apps and services so that the users may interact with them anywhere and using any devices around them. Every device has its own form factor and is built for certain needs. Understanding the user context and the need for interaction with the device is very important when building apps that will provide great user experience. For instance, it may not be practical to have a keyboard-like UI component in a watch app due to its size and form factor, whereas it may be feasible to use voice input using a text-to-speech feature provided within wearable platforms.

Smartphones have become an integral part of our day-to-day life over the last decade or so. They have become a natural extension of ourselves and have made us carry them everywhere in our pockets, handbags, or purses to help us fulfill our day-to-day tasks. They are used to perform mundane to more important tasks. The tasks that were performed using personal computers or laptops have slowly been done through pocket-sized smartphones or tablets.

The reason smartphones have reached a high level of adoption and popularity is due to their portability. They are light relative to personal laptops, easy to carry around, and users can use them pretty much anywhere they are needed.

Although mobile phones and tablets can satisfy most computing needs on the go, they're not very convenient in many situations. Mobile phones are not easy when you are already busy with one hand and want to work with the phone in the other hand. To do subtle tasks such as checking the current time or have a quick look at incoming text notifications, you still need to remove the phone from the pocket or remove it from the purse. Wearable devices can help us get things done faster with simpler and quicker interactions.

Wearable computing is the next big frontier in computing innovation. It has all kinds of possibilities and advantages. Although the smartphones are considered very personal devices, they are not quite as intimate as wearable devices such as smartwatches or fitness activity trackers. Wearable devices or body-borne devices have the advantage of being on the body all the time and measuring important metrics such as heart rate, walk steps, and body temperature.

They have a huge potential in the healthcare market, where they can monitor our health condition every minute and guide users through the steps needed to have a healthy lifestyle.

Wearable devices can also be used for biometric authentication. There are some startups, such as Nymi (https://nymi.com/using_the_nymi_band), who use individual heart and pulse rates as an identification factor for authentications.

How about we stop carrying the RFID-based access cards for entering buildings and use a wearable watch for authentication? It may even stop us needing to remember all kinds of passwords for various online websites; instead, we could use biometric data such as heart rate and iris recognition and build an authentication profile for logging into those systems.

Android Wear is Google's port of the Android operating system designed for wearable devices such as smartwatches. At the time of writing, there are over a dozen manufacturers, such as LG, Motorola, Huawei, Asus, Fossil, and TAG Heuer, who make Android Wear watches:

The primary difference between the Android Wear platform and its competitor Apple's watchOS platform is the support of devices and screen sizes.

Unlike Apple Watch, which is currently available only in 42 mm and 38 mm rectangular screen sizes, Android Wear comes in the round, square, and rectangular screen shapes. They also come in various different screen sizes other than the standard 42 mm and 38 mm sizes.

Another key thing to note is that Android Wear devices can be paired using Android Wear apps for both Android and iOS platforms.

In this book, we'll be covering the topics involved in Android Wear application development and helping you master the platform for writing rich and powerful Android Wear applications.

In this chapter, we discussed the wearable computing paradigm and contrasted it with the mobile and desktop computing platforms.

In the next chapter, we'll be diving into topics related to setting up the environment for Android Wear application development using Android Studio IDE. So, buckle up and get ready for the fun and exciting ride ahead.