With the latest update to Google Maps on your phone, Android Wear gains some mapping functionality.
After updating to Google Maps version 9.9 on your phone — which brings a neat new transparent status bar and some navigation features — you may notice that there's an actual Google Maps app on your connected Android Wear watch as well. The launcher icon for Maps showed up on our LG Watch Urbane (which of course has the latest version of Android Wear) after simply re-syncing apps after the latest phone app install, and though it appeared to be broken at first, a couple of reboots later and we had a surprisingly full-featured Maps app ... on our watch.
The app can be launched from the app launcher or by voice with an "open Maps" command, and when opened you get a full screen top-down map experience. You can scroll around, pinch-to-zoom (barely) and even switch between true North and device direction views. Zoom in/out buttons appear on the top of the screen when you tap it, which is much better than pinching, and you also get a small pin button that lets you quickly scroll through nearby places and navigate to them — though when you fire up navigation from the Maps app on the watch it still corresponds with launching Maps on your phone.
AnnaLynne McCord
Kate Beckinsale
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