LG and Audi’s smartwatch collaboration is the most desirable wearable of CES 2015, and while the carmaker says it’s just a prototype, the device offers a tantalizing glimpse of future LG wearables. Or at worst an agonizing look at a beautiful watch we’d love to own.
We tracked down the Audi/LG watch – still officially nameless, by the way – in Las Vegas today, and we can exclusively reveal that it’s not running Android Wear as originally believed. In fact, it’s packing completely different software based on LG’s Open webOS.
…I give up.
…you can tell it’s webOS by the UI framerate :o)
I didn’t want to say it.
But damn that is stuttery. Even worse than my Moto 360.
Hi Thom, did you mean stuttery animations?
I looked at the video but I could not see any stuttery animations. I mean this in the nicest way possible but could you please pin point at which point in the video did you see stuttering animations? P.S. I did not vote you down.
Edited 2015-01-08 06:16 UTC
Looks pretty smooth to me.
Maybe he is referring to the part where a list deep down the menu is scrolled. But to me it seems this guy is swiping a bit to hard and inaccurate. But it could use some tweaking.
Although I don’t want a start watch this is the best attempt judging by the ui. Looks cool and smooth.
You see the sluttery animation when the guy swipe up and down the icon headed lists, or swipe left and right to get to the previous screen. In fact most of the time there is no animation at all, not even fading out, the screen just lag then display the previous list.
The round scrolling bar is pretty fun though. Still, it’s pretty hard to figure at which nested level you currently are, you still have to learn by heart the menus, that’s not something for the broad audience that will soon be lost inside the user interface.
It is a watch, it HAVE to remain simple and accessible.
Now that would make for an interesting UX.
What exactly do you give up Thom?
To me it seems quite a good attempt and you can’t blame technology companies for exploring new worlds. Especially in this case where it is just a tech demo, instead of immediately selling some half assed device to consumers. Like Motorola did to you..
Trolling? I have serious doubts… xD
Well, I guess it’s better than running it on printers. But not by much…
And of course they fixed the UI, the only part that didn’t need fixing.
Edited 2015-01-08 07:17 UTC
Why should we care about smartwatches? Are they useful in any way?
It seems to me that all these companies pushing for smartwatches are really blinded by their own greed and can’t think outside the box; they keep trying to push the same paradigms we use on our phones and as such are trying to make these watches something we’d actively use to do things, to actively interact with them, instead of making them simply good at relaying information and displaying it. I mean, when your finger covers the whole god damn display when you’re interacting with it you have a serious usability-disaster on your hands and there’s not much you can do about it without re-thinking the whole thing from the get-go.
Normal, two scenario :
1- They try to avoid messing user experience with new paradigms
2- They just ‘recycle’ their current software into another form factor
3- The third answer
i tend to agree. I was personally hoping for less touch focus and more on hardware like buttons and scroll wheels (but not in the awkward iWatch direction, horizontal so its usable).
Marketing speak:
They are useful for the corporate partners that you trust to deliver customized suggestions based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different locations, and depending on whether your smartphone is NFC-enabled (if you have the latest iPhone 6 or 6+, consider yourself part of the “in” crowd), based on your peers’ interests as well.
“We are excited to announce industry’s first programmatic ad platform for Apple Watch developers and brand.”
http://www.geek.com/apple/apple-watch-will-soon-be-plagued-by-locat…
So, for the price of a gently used King Seiko, you can get a watch that needs constant charging, provides popup ads on your wrist, and probably has a usable lifespan of 18 months.
I was initially thinking that you were crazy and Apple would never allow the platform to suck that much, but then I thought of my friends iphone experience. She installed an app that provides daily notifications that remind her that its time to buy things from them. Every single F’ng day. They can be disabled within ios, but she doesn’t know how to do that.
Obviously your friend installed that app for a reason, like, she wants to buy things from this company. If she didn’t want to it would be trivial to uninstall.
As for ads on a watch, any watch that allows third party apps will have this. Simple solution: don’t install third party apps with ads.
Edited 2015-01-08 15:17 UTC
I’d suggest that a reputable company like Apple that has robust app screening, should reject these applications that will annoy their users. Its demeaning to their platform and userbase. It makes IOS look like win 98 with Bonsai Buddy.
With Android, I have no such illusions of consumer protection from terrible apps.
Apple should protect it’s users from apps that are harmful – for example apps that upload all your contacts to their site without permission etc.
But there is no need to protect thet users from apps that are ugly or annoying. If you don’t like the app remove it, why deprive others just because you don’t like an app.
Why deprive others of annoying/sleazy apps? Is that what you were asking? Because it protects unsuspecting customers from themselves.
If Apple had rejected this particular application with the note: No automated sales pitch notifications are allowed. They would have been forced to take that annoying part out, and leave the good sales front part of the app in. That would be win win, in my book. Or require the user to manually active them, if they want to be reminded every day that they have an app that will sell them stuff. Opt in. As it should be.
I’m not sure I would go as far as that. I would probably opt for applications having to specifically inform Apple (or whoever it is that is running the app-store in question in this hypothetical example) about any such things that might compromise users’ privacy or be considered spamming, and then make it very clear in the store to the end-users whenever they are trying to install an application doing any of this.
I dunno, perhaps a popup-box with the “OK” – button disabled for 5 seconds so the user can’t simply automatically just click on it when installing the app and thus has a higher chance of actually reading the warning there?
[Edit: Apologies, was using flat view, now realize you are talking about your “friend.”]
What’s the name of the app? Depending on what you are describing, it could be an App Store violation (i.e., it is a violation to push notifications without user consent — if your friend accepted them when first notified, well then — we aren’t talking about Apple failing to protect its users, we talking about your friend being careless or stupid initially and lazy since), but it also sounds like it could be a perfectly legit app but at the same time from a very questionable, low-quality source that few would find useful in the first place, plus stupid user behavior, plus entitled indignation. But at this point we have to trust your very vague anecdote. Please post the name of the app and a more detailed description; I’d love to look into it.
[Edit: as noted above, I thought you were still talking about the advertising on the Watch, but still leaving my comment here anyway…] You do understand that since the Watch isn’t out yet we don’t know that Apple will approve this yet because they aren’t allowing Watch submissions and there are no publicly available devices for testing, right? That the company who developed this ad tech already had to step back from several of its claims because they either did not have the tech yet and/or because several of the capabilities they touted are clearly violations of the SDK? Why are you using the past tense then?
Edited 2015-01-08 19:30 UTC
I was hoping to wait ’til you responded, but this has been running around in my head: is the actual complaint that a shopping app is allowed to send a notification per day about shopping deals and that Apple hasn’t interceded to prevent this (even though the notification almost certainly, to 99.999% certainty, needed the user to enable it and it can likewise be shut off) and that means that Apple is failing, even demeaning, its platform and user base by condoning sleazy behavior? Is that really the argument?
This “story” tells me a few things…. about you and your friend, but not anything about whether or not Apple “allows their platform to suck.”
All I know so far is your friend wanted an app for daily deals and she (or more clearly, YOU) are now annoyed that she is getting notifications on a daily basis for deals… and she knows that she can shut off these notifications but she hasn’t bothered herself to do so… but in your mind, this is Apple’s problem.
Edited 2015-01-08 19:36 UTC
Horrible hardware, lovely OS.
It just makes me sad that they are reviving the OS but seem to be missing what made it so good in the first place..
When you pay $200-$300 or more on a watch, do you really plan on upgrading it every year or two years?? Watch are not like phone, you buy and tend to keep them for a long while.
And those 1.0 software are so lacking and the risk of not being able to upgrade because of low spec is scary.
I’m gonna wait a couple of years before even thinking about a smartwatch.
Edited 2015-01-08 14:31 UTC
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t understand the purpose of having a smart watch. Smart phone, sure, but this form factor is just awful. Outside of enthusiasts, I just don’t see much utility. I also don’t like having to charge a watch every day or every couple of days.
People compensates for not being smart enough/anymore.
So they buy some smartness…
I’d agree. I think the problem is the devices themselves haven’t figured it out yet. Smart phones today are like PDA’s in the late 90’s. I don’t want to carry around another piece of crap, unless its going to solve multiple problems in a friction less way.
That right there is the issue. I just cannot figure out what problem(s) a smart watch is ever going to solve that a smart phone with a better display can’t solve today.
The few people with a smartwatch I’ve seen basically use it as a messages notification tool. Which is kind of silly, the smartphone can handle that just fine.
The only smartwatch that makes sense would be something like Android Wear which is just a ‘Google Now’ watch.
It mostly doesn’t need controls, it will notify you of what it ‘thinks’ is useful to you at the time it selects.
It just isn’t for me. I don’t want to upload all my data to Google.