I had an idea - find as many useful apps for Android Wear as I can. This task was not so easy as I thought it would be. I had to dig through trashy apps like remote launcher of farting sound, dozens of regular calculators, flashlights, and other junk. In spite of this, I think I managed to create a list of really cool and useful apps. And I am ready to share it with you. I include here only apps that were developed for Android Wear, rather than apps that just support notifications on Android Wear. Please, notice that I created this list according to my personal opinion, and it can be different from yours.
Nomination: Best Watch Face
Description:
One of the main advantages of Android Wear compared to their top-first competitor - Apple Watch - is the ability to create custom watch-face. There already are lots of watch-faces for Android, but some developers forget, that the primary watches function is showing time. All additional contexual information and aesthetic side are secondary functions. Weather Watch Face is an app that represents all the information conveniently. As you can tell from the name this app additionally shows weather, supports round and square screens and works really good in ambient mode. If you don't like watch-face with weather, I recommend you to have a look at other apps from these developers. They really know how to represent the content correctly.
Price: Free
Nomination: Best Camera app
Description:
Android Wear itself supports using camera, but it allows you only to remote take a photo on your watches. With Wear Camera you can remotely turn on camera, make a shot and see what is going on through viewfinder with a small delay. It can come handy when you have reps work in your house or you just want to pretend to be a spy.
Price: Free
Nomination: Best Game
Description:
I can't say that there is plenty of games for Android Wear. There are some paid games, but their quality makes you doubt whether they are worth money or not.
Among all free tested games I liked classical Tic Tac Toe and Flopsy Droid - one of Flappy Bird clones. Tic Tac Toe has a mode for two players and different design themes. Flopsy Droid has easy one-click control and it is a quite good time-killer. Both games are free.
Price: Free
Nomination: Sport App
Description:
Android Wear platform is designed for watching information in a glance. So it is very useful in the sport. There are not so much sports Android Wear apps but you can download Runtastic and Runkeeper. They keep track of specific activities, like cycling or roller-skating. They also can save your movement history during your work out. One of big advantage of this app is a integration with Google Fit. Google Fit is an app from Google that collects data from sports apps and displays them all in one place. When you complete an activity with the Runtastic app and sync it with Runtastic.com, Google Fit will also receive the activity data and then display information such as start time, duration, distance covered and calories burned. This information then forms part of your daily activity stats in Google Fit.
Price: Free, with paid content
Nomination: Social Apps
Major social networks like Instagram, twitter or Facebook have not released official clients for Android Wear yet. But you can find unofficial clients for Instagram and Twitter that are fairly good.
Description:
It is a standalone client for Twitter. You can tweet with your voice, read your twitter feed like flash-cards and open Twitter on your phone. Though it has a drawback - the app behaves oddly with some devices. For example, I didn't have any troubles with my phone, but I could not sign in using my tablet. And judging by the feedback I was not the only one with this problem. If they fix this bug, Bunting will be the best twitter client on the moment
Price: Free
Description
Unofficial client for Instagram with a little weird name. Instagram for Wear would be more logical. You can watch your insta feed, like photos and view comments. That client has some flaws - low photo resolution, limited number of photos in insta feed and it doesn't support round screen when you view comments. But still for today it is the best client for Instagram
Price: Paid
Nomination: Best useful app
Description:
It can take a while to find all the apps for Android Wear, that is why you need an app that collects all suitable apps and divides them into categories. This app is Wear Store. This app looks like Google Play. The list of suitable apps is regularly updated. Wear Store for Wear Apps should be the first app that you have to download after purchasing smart watches
Price: Free, with ads
Sum Up
Though Android Wear is fast developing platform, quality and quantity of apps don't match high standards. Developers are just testing the platform and releasing many simple and unnecessary apps. But still, it is better than what Apple has - watches are not in the market and the platform itself potentially isn't that convenient for developers. If you have an idea for a cool app for Android Wear, you can have a look at my tutorials.Thanks for reading my list.
