Everything you need to know about Android Wear

[MUSIC] Android Wear is Google software for a new wave of smart watches. Unless you've been keeping a keen eye on all the tech news, it might be difficult to quite grasp exactly what Android Wear really is and why it's important, so let me take you through it. Android Wear is, as the name suggests, android that you wear. The watch connects to your android phone acting almost as a second screen using your phones internet connection to display notifications and other information. It's best to think of it as taking Google Nav from your phone and squashing it into a watch [UNKNOWN] Google Now Android Wear aim to show you important information on your watch, right when you need it, without having to get your phone out and search for yourself. You can perform searches on it, control music playing on your phone, see incoming calls, messages, and other alerts. And surprise, surprise, it even tells the time. The information is presented as cards that pop up that you can swipe through on the touch screen but you can also perform actions using voice commands. Unlike an Android on phones, Android wear is not skinned by manufacturers, meaning that each watch runs plain un tampered versions of the software. That allows for an identical user experience across all watches, and by keeping the architecture the same it's much easier for app developers to creat their apps. There are various apps that you download on your phone that have some interaction with the watch. Recipe app Cookpad let's you find a recipe on the phone, then follow it step by step on the watch. There aren't many apps to get particularly excited about just yet but as Google has done its best to make it easy for developers to create apps, we should start to see the shelf filling out soon. Although it's exciting to think of wearable technology as the next big thing, there's not yet anything the Android Wear smartwatch has to offer that makes them a critical purchase. Instead, they're just a novelty buy for the dedicated gadget geeks. It's really [UNKNOWN] and with most of the biggest tech brands on board we certainly going to continue to see more models arriving and more refinements to the software in the future. The next big thing in technology may not be here just yet. The watch from space, I think, might be just around the corner [MUSIC]