Wearable material

Whereas TV apps are almost exclusively for finding and consuming video content, Wearable apps can, and do, perform a huge number of functions, and for this reason are more like handheld apps. Although heavily dependent on the card, almost any widget can be used in an Android Wear application, and just as with handheld applications, there are a series of specific rules governing the sizes, margins, and positioning of screen components.

Unlike most devices that operate independently, Wearable Android devices need to be coupled with a handset that does most of the processing, and before we can explore material layouts, we need to see how this pairing is achieved at a technical level.

Connecting to a Wearable device

It is not necessary to have access to a physical Wearable device to develop and design apps for Wear, as this can be done with an emulator created with the AVD manager. If you have not already done so, ensure that you have downloaded the appropriate system image for...