Without downloading the right apps, your smartwatch isn’t nearly as powerful as it could be. Yes, it can show you when you have a text message and track how many steps you took, but that’s just a corner of the joy that can come with owning a smartwatch and linking it to your phone

That said, sifting through apps to find the best of the bunch can be a little exhausting, so we’ve done the heavy-lifting for Android users and source the best Android-exclusive apps (we paired ours with the incredible new Huawei P9 device), plus a few OS-neutral essentials, to get you started:

1. Sleep as Android

Sleep as Android is a smartphone app, but it’s even more useful when used with a smartwatch. The app tracks your sleep patterns throughout the night, helping you learn more about your sleep cycles and the overall healthiness of your sleep schedule.

2. Feel the Wear

Smart device technology has come a long way, but the vibration function for most of these gadgets is still basic, to say the least. Feel the Wear opts to change that, giving you the ability to customise vibrations for different apps and notifications on your smartwatch. For example, you can turn texts into a short burst of small vibrations, or calendar notifications into longer ones.

3. Wear Camera

Wear Camera is a useful tool for when you want to use your smartphone’s camera from a distance. With this app, you’ll be able to sync your smartwatch to your smartphone and view what the smartphone camera views from a distance. You can use this to get a look in hard-to-reach areas, or set up brief surveillance rings.

4. Wear Audio Recorder

When you need to record a conversation, a lecture, or notes at a meeting, there’s no better way to do it than by clicking a button on your watch. Wear Audio Recorder lets you do that, later managing your recordings so you can find them easily.

5. Google Keep

For all their benefits, smartwatches do make it difficult to keep good notes. Keep is an app that makes it easy to take notes, make lists, and set up reminders for your daily life—even on your smartwatch’s comparably small screen.

Image: Visual hunt

6. Toggles Wear

If you’re interested in keeping tabs of all your settings in one convenient, easily interactive screen, Toggles Wear is the right app for you. It will help you flip on and off features like airplane mode, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth

Plus 4 OS-neutral apps that make our ‘essentials’ list:

Though these apps aren’t exclusive to Android, they are good to have.

7. Find My Phone

There’s a bit of irony to the title of this app, but it works just as well for wearable devices. With Find My Phone, you can make it easier to track down your smartwatch’s location if it’s ever lost or stolen. It’s one of the first apps you should download in case something unpleasant happens to your device.

8. Instaweather

Few bits of news information are as immediately important as the weather, but there are plenty of weather apps on the market. Instaweather differentiates itself by offering a number of different customisable watch faces, each of which display weather data of your preference—such as temperature and cloud cover—in different ways. You can also opt to receive alerts about inclement weather in your area.

9. Coffee

Even though your Android smartwatch will come with an embedded messenger feature, Coffee is a brilliant extension. This app gives you several pre-written quick replies to choose from, so you can respond to messages on the fly without taking your smartphone out. You can also use it to quickly find contacts for faster SMS messaging on the go.

10. IF by IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “if this, then that.” Its latest wearable app, IF, allows you to tie together basic commands, events, and notifications to fully customise how your smartwatch responds to various situations, whether that’s a changing weather condition or an incoming text message.

Choosing an Android Smartwatch

There are a number of smartwatches available currently, with support for different types of applications. The Android smartwatch market, for example, has products like the Huawei Watch, which is also compatible with Huawei smartphones. Vodafone currently offers a package deal for both the watch and phone in various storage and color options.

Regardless of whether you have an existing smartwatch or you’re getting a new one to join the crowd, these apps can help you take your experience to the next level.



