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Enlarge / Android Wear 2.0 promises major improvements for Google smartwatches. (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google has provided three major updates to Android Wear since it came to market two years ago—every time the version of Android that Wear is built on top of is updated, Google also adds Wear-specific features. Android 5.0, 5.1, and 6.0 all had corresponding Wear releases that smoothed out rough edges, refined the interface, and made the watches more capable.

Today at its developer conference, Google is announcing Android Wear 2.0, a version number bump that reflects the magnitude of the changes it introduces. The update gives the UI a comprehensive Material Design-themed overhaul, enables compatible watches to do more without a phone attached, introduces some new input methods to make communication easier, and copies one of the things that the Apple Watch gets right. And since it’s based on Android N, it picks up support for features like Data Saver, Java 8, and new emoji, among other platform features. Here are the highlights.

Standalone apps

Probably the biggest addition to Wear 2.0 is the ability for apps to communicate directly over the Internet via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or (for the few watches that have it) cellular, rather than relying exclusively on a tethered phone or cloud syncing between your watch and your phone for communication.

Enlarge / The Android mascot wearing the Vive. We don't know what the hardware will look like yet. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA—As we've been obsessively tracking for about a year and a half now, Google is making a big push into virtual reality. This week at I/O 2016 the company is finally ready to talk about its VR ambitions, and the first news out of the gate is about the "Virtual Reality Mode" built into Android N Developer Preview 3. Google is also announcing a hardware certification program that allows an Android phone to earn the title "VR ready," and the first "VR ready" phone will be the Nexus 6P.

Google has done a lot of work whipping Android into shape for VR with Android N DP 3. Previously Google's only smartphone VR project was "Cardboard," a cardboard box with plastic lenses that could hold a smartphone. Cardboard gave a rough approximation of VR a very low cost, but it wasn't a serious platform for real VR immersion.

"Google currently has Cardboard but Cardboard worked in spite of Android, if you'd like," explained Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke to Ars. "It's clever and simple but we never did anything at the platform level to make it work. With N, we have." In Android N, those changes come down to improving motion-to-photon latency—how quickly you can get the display pixels to change in response to your head moving. When you move in VR, the sensors detect the movement, signal the GPU to draw new frames, and those frames get sent to the display to be drawn. If this doesn't happen fast enough, you'll feel sick.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA—Today Google is releasing the third developer preview of Android N, the new version of Google's mobile operating system due this fall. Developer Preview 3 continues to tweak existing features while adding new ones, and stability should also be improved; Google tells us that it considers this build to be "beta" quality, ready for developers and more-ambitious users to use it as their daily driver.

One of the largest additions is something we found evidence of in the second preview build: a new Google-developed VR service that will make it easier to turn compatible Android smartphones into modest VR headsets like Samsung's Gear VR. We have more on the feature and its system requirements in a separate article.

Also new to DP3 is a revised partitioning scheme that borrows from ChromeOS in order to expedite the installation of system updates. Android N is already using a combination of just-in-time (JIT) and ahead-of-time (AOT) code compilation to get rid of the lengthy "app optimization" part of system updates. DP3 reduces the amount of time your phone actually shuts down to install updates to the system partition. Theoretically, Android updates should now work more like ChromeOS updates: install them in the background and then do a quick reboot to make the update take effect.

Today, Android N is killing the "Installing System Update" screen. Earlier, Android N killed the "optimizing apps" screen. Overall we should see much faster update installs.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—With Google I/O comes a fresh version of the Android N Developer Preview—we're now up to Developer Preview 3. Google is calling this version of N its "first beta-quality candidate" and is encouraging a wider audience to try it out. Both OTA and image download should be available for the Nexus 6, 9, 5X, 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel C, and Android One (General Mobile 4G).

There's two headline features in this release. The first is a new VR platform, which we're covering in a separate article. The second will make for some great headlines: "Android copies Chrome OS update system!" But it's probably not what you're thinking. Yes, Chrome OS and Android are getting a little closer together, but Android is just borrowing the update installation method from Chrome OS, not the part where Google has full control over everything and delivers reliable updates.

Updates, once they are created by your OEM, approved by your carrier, and downloaded, will now be applied "seamlessly," just like on Chrome OS. You'll be on version 1.0, reboot, and you'll be quickly, transparently upgraded to version 2, without having to wait for any "Android is upgrading" dialog boxes.

Alan Brenner, speaking at BlackBerry DevCon 2010. Brenner, a former Sun executive who dealt with Java licensing, testified on behalf of Oracle in federal court today. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO—Oracle put two former Sun Microsystems executives on the stand today to testify about how Google's Android hurt the market for Java licensing to phones.

It's the eighth day of the Oracle v. Google trial, the second showdown in a legal dispute that began in 2010, when Oracle sued Google over the use of Java APIs in Android. In 2012, a judge ruled that APIs can't be copyrighted at all, but an appeals court disagreed. Now Oracle may seek up to $9 billion in damages, while Google is arguing that its use of the 37 APIs in question constitutes "fair use."

First to the stand was Neil Civjan, Sun's head of global sales, who testified about how the company's substantial business licensing Java for mobile phones tanked after the launch of Android.

(credit: Google Home)

At its I/O developer conference today, Google unveiled Google Home, a hardware device shipping later this year, and Google Assistant, a conversational digital personal assistant. With this pair of announcements, the company is going head-to-head with Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and most significantly, Amazon's Echo and its Alexis voice agent.

The Home is a small round gadget with microphones and speakers that's always listening for your questions and commands. It will plumb into home automation, including Google's own Nest, and it will broadcast video and audio to Chromecast sticks; this is all driven by an always-listening voice interface.

Google's conversational assistant is in the same vein as Cortana and Siri, Google Assistant. Google Assistant will be on phones and wearables too, and Google says that it will be better at picking out the context of what you're doing than any of the competitors. As an example, when standing near Cloud Gate, better known as The Bean, in Chicago, you can ask Google Assistant "Who designed this?" Based on your location alone, Assistant will understand that you're probably referring to the large shiny sculpture in front of you, and answer "Anish Kapoor."