When it was revealed that the Huawei Watch has a speaker hidden under its belly we speculated whether this could mean the forthcoming availability of speaker support in Android Wear. We haven’t heard anything official in that regard, so it’s possible Huawei included the small speaker just for the sake of future-proofing.
But they’re not alone, and suddenly it seems like Google has slipped a memo to manufacturers that they should start including speakers in their wearables. The ASUS ZenWatch 2 also seems to have quietly been loaded up with one, or so says whoever took this photo:
We’d call it a coincidence, but it can’t be a coincidence that the newest Android Wear watches on the market both happen to include speakers when we haven’t see it in any previous devices to this point.
So what do we even need a speaker for? Not music, I can tell you that. If you’re in a position to listen to music without headphones, you probably want to be doing that on your phone. That’s unless, of course, you have an Android Wear watch that can be used without a smartphone (none to date, but the upcoming LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition will allow it). We could see it being useful for audible notifications and voice features during navigation, or perhaps just audible feedback from Google voice searches.
Whatever the reason, it can’t hurt to have at all, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that speaker support is one of the big items on Google’s checklist whenever they get around to bringing the Marshmallow-based build of Android Wear to our wrists.
[via: Google+ source: mobiflip]
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