Android Wear is about a year old now and since being officially released during Google I/O last year, the competition between hardware manufacturers has been strong. Samsung, Motorola and LG has been battling it out by releasing countless watches powered by Google's wearable platform. As a whole, analysts estimates that there are about 700,000 Android Wear devices out in the wild.

As you already know, Apple officially unveiled the Apple Watch with full details earlier today and although Android Wear and the Apple Watch are two totally separate device categories due to their platform dependent nature. But the challenge and comparison between the two is bound to arise in the tech landscape.

Not being intimated by Apple, TheVerge reports that Google is readying new features for Android Wear devices and this new comes after the company announced Android 5.1 Lollipop earlier today. The major jump in the next update is unlocking support for Wi-Fi on the Android Wear watches which means that users can alternatively connect to Wi-Fi to receive data opposed to syncing through Bluetooth.

This will work because majority of Android Wear devices have Wi-Fi built and the current software just didn't enable the connection. Besides that, another feature being implemented in the next version of Android Wear is gesture controls which will simplify the layered card UI currently being featured on all watches running Android Wear. There is not much info about how this would exactly work but this feature aims to help in navigating on the watch.

As to what Google plans to call this update, we're not entirely sure but the Android 5.1 name might be mentioned?

SOURCE: TheVerge