Watch out Apple: Android Wear smartwatches could soon play nice with your iPhone
iOS users could look forward to a whole world of wrist-hugging options
Flying pigs will settle on a freshly frozen hell and start an interpretative dance theatre group before Apple allows its Watch to shake hands with Android smartphones.
Google, on the other hand, could be a lot less protective of its smartwatch babies.
Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh – the same developer that managed to push iOS notification and call-answering powers to his Moto 360 – has unearthed an interesting snippet of code in Android Wear 4.4W marked “AncsHandler”.
Why is this significant? Because it refers to Apple’s Notification Center Service, which strongly suggests that Google has begun tinkering around with iOS support for Android Wear, and will probably release a future version of the wearable OS with full, official support for Apple devices. The ANCS API which is present in iOS, enables devices like the Pebble smartwatch to display iOS notifications.
There’s no word on whether or not the newer version of Android Wear 5.0 has this chunk of iOS code nestled in it however. If it doesn’t, then it looks like Google decided to change its mind, for the time being at least.
If Android Wear does eventually offer full support for iOS devices, it’ll give iPhone and iPad users a choice of devices other than the various different styles of Apple Watch on offer, while extending Google’s reach even further.
With only 720,000 Android Wear smartwatches shipped last year, that huge Apple user base will be a very tempting pie indeed.
Esat Dedezade
Contributor 
