Android Marshmallow update is slowly stepping up its presence in the vast Android world. After confirming the software update for several smartphones, Google has just confirmed the rollout of Marshmallow update for all Android Wear smartwatches "in the coming months."
Google announced the rollout of API 23 SDK for Android Wear devices, which is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition is the first smartwatch to run the latest API 23 while other smartwatches currently run on API 22. In the next couple of months, the API 23 will be rolled out to all other smartwatches over the air.
In an official blog post on Wednesday, Developer Advocate at Google Wayne Piekarski explained the new changes in the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for Android Wear smartwatches. These include, new permission model to allow users to grant app permissions, round and not-round resource qualifiers to make it easier for developers to build apps for both square and round smartwatches, speaker support and Intel x86 chip.
"I am particularly excited about the -round and -notround resource qualifier, so you can express your layouts for all watch types in a much simpler way," Piekarski wrote in a Google+ post.
It's worth noting that the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition comes with a speaker and the new API will let developers take full advantage of all the features. It also paves the path for future smartwatches to integrate a speaker so that handling calls and listening to audio files becomes less painful.
Piekarski's post also noted that developers must ensure that apps are compatible with both API 23 and API 22 smartwatches as the OTA update will arrive in time.
