Android Wear 2.0 is a powerful platform for wearable smart devices. Wear 2.0 enabled close to 72 percent new device activation in the wearable device market from the day Wear was announced. Google is working with multiple iconic brands to bring the best user experience to smart watches. Continuous improvement in the Wear hardware for new devices in the market shows the potential Wear devices can offer. Google introduced a whole new way of experiencing wearable technology with material design, standalone applications, watch face innovations, and more.
The Wear platform is becoming more popular, and Android developers can reap the benefits of improving their ability to program for Wear devices.
This book helps to create five Wear applications, with comprehensive explanations. We start with making a wearable note taking application by exploring Wear-specific user interface components and building a Wear map application with the ability to persist a quick note on the map. We will build a complete chat application with a companion mobile application. We will also build a health and fitness application to monitor pulse rate, a reminder to drink water, and so on, and also write a digital watch. We will complete the book by exploring the capabilities of the Wear 2.0 platform.
Have fun building great wear applications.
Chapter 1, Getting You Ready to Fly - Setting Up Your Development Environment, teaches you to write your first Wear application, explores the essential UI components specific to Wear applications, and discusses Android Wear design principles.
Chapter 2, Let us Help Capture What is on Your Mind - WearRecyclerView and More, covers WearableRecyclerView and the WearableRecyclerView adapter, and SharedPreferences, BoxInsetLayout, and the animated DelayedConfirmation.
Chapter 3, Let us Help Capture What is on Your Mind - Saving Data and Customizing the UI, explores the integration of the Realm database and custom fonts, UI updates, and finalizing the project.
Chapter 4, Measure Your Wellness - Sensors, showcases the accuracy of the sensors, battery consumption, Wear 2.0 doze mode, material design, and so on.
Chapter 5, Measure Your Wellness - Syncing Collected Sensor Data, focuses on syncing collected sensor data, collecting sensor data from a Wear device, processing the received data to find calories and distance, sending data to a Wear application from a mobile application, Realm DB integration, WearableRecyclerView, and CardView.
Chapter 6, Ways to Get Around Anywhere - WearMap and GoogleAPIclient, explains the Developer API console; the Maps API Key; and SHA1 Fingerprint, SQlite integration, Google Maps, the Google API Client, and Geocoder.
Chapter 7, Ways to Get Around Anywhere - UI controls and More, looks at understanding UI controls, marker controls, map zoom controls, StreetView in Wear, and best practices.
Chapter 8, Let us Chat in a Smart Way - Messaging API and More, discusses configuring Firebase for your mobile application, creating a user interface, understanding the messaging API, working with Google API Client, and building a Wear module.
Chapter 9, Let us Chat in a Smart Way - Notifications and More, covers Firebase functions, notifications, material design Wear app Wear 2.0 input method framework, and so on.
Chapter 10, Just a Face for Your Time - WatchFace and Services, outlines CanvasWatchFaceService and registering a watch face, CanvasWatchFaceService.Engine and callbacks, watch face elements and initializing them writing the watch face, and handling gestures and tap events.
Chapter 11, More About Wear 2.0, explores a standalone application, curved layout and more UI components the Complications API, different navigations and actions, wrist gestures, input method framework, and distributing Wear apps to the Play Store.
To be able to follow with this book, you need a computer with the latest Android Studio version installed. You need internet to set up all the required SDK for Wear development. If you have a Wear device to test the application, that would be good; otherwise, Android Wear emulators will do the magic.
This book is for Android developers who already have a strong understanding of programming and developing apps in Android. This book helps the reader advance from being an intermediate-level to an expert-level Android developer, by adding Wear development skills to their knowledge.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Specific commands or tools from the interface will be identified as follows:
Select the Save button.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
compile 'com.google.android.support:wearable:2.0.0' compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-wearable:10.0.1' provided 'com.google.android.wearable:wearable:2.0.0'
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <android.support.wearable.view.BoxInsetLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:id="@+id/container" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" tools:context="com.ashok.packt.wear_note_1.MainActivity" tools:deviceIds="wear"> </android.support.wearable.view.BoxInsetLayout>
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
adb connect 192.168.1.100New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Let the default selected template be the Wear application code stub Always On Wear Activity."
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