Android Wear 2.0 Final Developer Preview Released; Brings Along iOS Support for New Features

As the 'early February' timeline given by Google for the official release of Android Wear 2.0 approaches, the company has released the fifth and final developer preview for the upcoming version of its wearable OS. The latest build enables developers to submit their apps optimised for Android Wear 2.0, and, the final developer preview also brings along iOS support for the new features.

The developers will now be able to distribute their apps to Android Wear 2.0 devices paired with iPhones, just like they do on Android, Google said in its release post. "To do so, just set the standalone=true flag in your watch app manifest. This lets the Play Store know that your watch app doesn't require an Android phone app, and therefore can appear in the Play Store on watches paired to iPhones," the company said.

Android Wear Smartwatches Now Work With iPhone

The final Android Wear 2.0 developer preview build further enables iOS devices to perform phone hand-off flows like OAuth and RemoteIntent in order to launch a web page on paired iOS device, the company said.

"The available network bandwidth for standalone apps can be lower than expected, as the platform balances battery savings vs network bandwidth," Google said in its post.

The developers will now be able submit their apps optimised for Android Wear 2.0 as the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 5 brings along an update to the Wearable Support Library as well.

With the latest preview, the developers need to just flip a flag to toggle to the single-page, icon-only action drawer, which provides faster, more streamlined navigation to different views in your app, Google said. The search giant has also added support for NFC Host Card Emulation to enable Android Pay on supported smartwatches, as pointed out in a report by 9To5Google. The latest developer preview further brings along some bug fixes as well.

Android Wear 2.0 is expected to be released on February 9 alongside the launch of the LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style smartwatches - said to be the flagship devices of Android Wear 2.0.