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Watch this: an intrepid developer has made his iPhone talk to his Android Wear smartwatch.
Google’s Android Wear software is designed to enable wearable technology such as smartwatches and fitness bands to pair with an Android phone. When you get a message or notification on your phone, it pops up on your watch too, saving you the hassle of fishing your phone from your pocket. But Android Wear doesn’t talk to Apple devices, just like the forthcoming Apple Watch won’t talk to Android phones.
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However, phone fans aren’t known for taking no for an answer, and developer Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh — known as MohammadAG to the XDA community — is a prime example. He recently posted a video showing a message arriving on his iPhone 6, while a corresponding notification popped up simultaneously on his Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch .
To achieve this cross-platform co-operation, Abu-Garbeyyeh says he didn’t even have to go under the bonnet of either device to access the closed-off code and jailbreak iOS or root Android.
He describes how he connected Android Wear to iOS directly using Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) APIs. Those APIs are provided to developers to make their devices play nice with the iPhone and iPad — it’s the same system used by the Pebble smartwatch , for example, to talk to the iPhone.
The crowdfunded Pebble Watch was one of the first to get people excited about the burgeoning smartwatch trend. It supports Android Wear as well as connecting to Apple devices. Other devices that work cross-platform include the Microsoft Band .
The Apple Watch will launch in the US in April.
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