Android Wear smartwatches will receive Android 6.0 Marshmallow update in 'coming months'

Google has confirmed that all Android Wear wearables will receive Android 6.0 Marshmallow along with the announcement that the company has rolled out API 23 SDK for Android Wear devices based on the new Android 6.0 Marshmallow too. The first smartwatch to run Android 6.0 Marshmallow (API 23) for Android Wear will be the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition. Other Android-based smartwatches will receive the OTA update for API 23 based on Android Marshmallow in the ‘coming months’. At the moment, all current Android Wear devices run API 22.  Developer Advocate at Google Wayne Piekarski mentioned via a Google+ post that, “I am particularly excited about the -round and -notround resource qualifier, so you can express your layouts for all watch types in a much simpler way.” In terms of features, API 23 introduces a new runtime permissions model for both phones and watches. The new permissions model allows users to pick and choose which permissions to grant apps at the time of use. In addition, new permissions settings allow users to turn on and off app permissions at any time. The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE will also be the first watch to include speaker support. Users can play audio files using the same APIs that are available on Android phones, such as AudioTrack, MediaPlayer, and ExoPlayer. In addition to the resource qualifiers, there’s support for external speakers as well. The API 23 SDK also offers Intel x86 support. The new TAG Heuer Connected, along with other upcoming Android Wear watches, is based on Intel x86 processors.