At the end of September, Google not only released the third Developer Preview for Android Wear 2.0, but also confirmed that the public launch of the smartwatch platform would not happen until sometime in early 2017.
That gives a bit more breathing room for Google to roll out features for Android Wear 2.0, and also gives time for developers to support more built-in features for their apps when the platform arrives next year. And now Google has released another developer preview to help with that.
Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 4 is now available. It adds “Seamless Authentication,” which will allow users to tap a button on their watch and an authentication screen on their phone. This should make authenticating log-ins for certain apps easier, especially with Google Sign-In support.
The new Developer Preview also supports in-app billing, which means that developers can now make it even easier to monetize their watch faces or Android Wear apps. Now a user just needs to input a 4-digit Google Account PIN and they can quickly buy something right from the Android Wear app.
The other new addition to Android Wear 2.0 is actually the return of “Swipe-to-Dismiss.” Google says they heard the feedback that users wanted the feature to return, and now it has. Google broke down the platform and API changes with the return of the feature:
- Activities now automatically support swipe-to-dismiss. Swiping an activity from left to right will result in it being dismissed and the app will navigate down the back stack.
- New Fragment and View support. Developers can wrap the containing views of a Fragment or Views in general in the new SwipeDismissFrameLayout to implement custom actions such as going down the back stack when the user swipes rather than exiting the activity.
- Hardware button now maps to “power” instead of “back” which means it can no longer be intercepted by apps.
There are other new additions, like compatibility with Android Wear 1.0 apps, cross-device promotion, and more. You can read all the changes through the source link below.
Are you looking forward to the arrival of Android Wear 2.0 next year?
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