Will an Android Wear watch work with my shiny new iPhone?

by Peter Poliwoda

This week I became a proud owner of an iPhone 6s which is the first time I own an iOS device. OK I lied, I had a 2nd gen iPod Touch when iOS didn't have that many features to compare and not many competing devices. Say it doesn't count.

Changing platforms from Android raises a couple of important questions, like:

  • will I be able to do the same stuff on the new phone?
  • will my other stuff work with my new stuff?
  • will I be able to do stuff with my new stuff with my other stuff?

First thing I worried was connecting a Moto360 smart watch to do the phone. Here are some answers:

The good

The good thing is that after quick fiddling with the watch it worked like a charm. The Android Wear app is readily available on the App Store and it connects to the phone just like on Android. There are even some nice pretty watch faces that I didn't see on Android

The bad

You can expect some missing features. First thing I noticed was the favourite contacts list from the menu was gone. Not a big deal since I never used it but it's something that might prove useful once.

The Ugly

Connectivity. Cannot connect to the phone is something you're gonna see a bit. Background processes are handled somewhat differently on iOS so this may be a common view.
The process also uses the Location Services a little too much and I think this might put a strain on my battery, not to mention being invigilated by the Android Wear app.

Notifications

Notification give me mixed feelings. The watch shows notifications like on Android but in some cases it doesn't show the app icon so I can assume they're notifications provided by the phone itself. They'll get grouped if you set them to group in the Notifications settings. Not having Gmail on the phone still gives Gmail notifications not displayed on the phone itself which I treat as a plus.

A couple of days of usage wasn't too much to tell the whole picture but the bottom line is that you don't have to ditch your Android Wear smart watch if you get an iPhone.