Android Wear Watches now work with iPhone

Today, Google is rolling out an update to Android Wear that allows Android Wear watches to work with your iPhone. The goal, it seems, is to give those who use primarily Android services on their iPhone an opportunity to use an Android Wear watch rather than Apple’s Watch.

Google says that the update will allow you to get info such as phone calls, notifications and your favorite apps. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll get notifications from Apple’s native iMessage app or phone calls from your actual iPhone. Instead, it looks like the only notifications you’ll really get is if you use Google Hangouts for your texts and phone calls. Nice and all, but how many iPhone users really use that?

You can also use the “OK Google” command to ask questions about weather and small facts of course. Google Now is great and we could see this being a very useful feature.

Still, there are already some major caveats including the fact that only three Android Wear watches — the Huawei Watch, the Asus ZenWatch 2, and the LG Watch Urbane — support this and two of them aren’t even out yet.

Supported iPhones including the iPhone 5, 5C, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus will be able to access all of the same information Android users see, except the custom watch faces found on Google Play. Google says that there will be a curated set of third-party faces, but for now, choices are limited.

Truth be told, my gut tells me that this update will have very little if any impact on the Apple Watch. Why? Because as the Watch gets deeper and deeper integration with iOS and other Apple platforms, Android will always be the second class citizen. Not getting the notifications that are native to the iPhone itself is a huge miss despite what tech journalists think.

Is this a good thing for Apple? Sure. But is this going to change the game at all for Android Watch manufacturers? I doubt it.