Smartwatch wearers have to put up with a number of drawbacks. There's the typically crappy battery life, the bulkiness (or ugliness, depending on whose eyes are looking), and the remarks people get when they've been looking at their watch for longer than a passing glance. "Are you in a hurry?" "Is there somewhere else you'd rather be?" "Am I that boring?" Even if the answer to all three questions is yes, that still doesn't explain the situation at hand, or should I say, wrist (pause for groans).

The developer of Augmented SmartWatch Pro has addressed this issue by adding customizable haptic feedback options for Android Wear devices in the latest update. Users can set distinctive patterns for each app using a combination of short and long vibrations. Normal text messages can vibrate once, while something important can shoot out four attention-grabbing pulses instead. The developer has provided a list of examples, though I think I would probably smother my watch with two pillows and a sleeping bag if I had to deal with four long vibrates every time someone sent me an instant message.

Keep in mind, vibrations aren't necessarily subtle. If anything, they can make situations even more awkward. I've had a moment or two where having my watch suddenly vibrate really left me hoping no one noticed. I mean, we've all been that person whose phone went off when a room was dead silent.

Nevertheless, this is still a cool release. Check out the full changelog for more details.

What's new:

  • Android Wear
    • More info here – Auto Enhanced Haptic Feedback – Taking the cue from Google Maps (short-short-long) vibration cues. Alerts are enhanced as follows:
      • For high priority senders – the # (from 1 to 4) of the high priority sender is pulsed to the Wear watch (after the normal # of pulses to indicate a high priority sender). The # is a short pulse(s) which is the vibration duration / 3;
        • For example – assume we set high priority vibrations to 2 and the high priority sender is #3 then the Android Wear will pulse – long-long-short-short-short
      • SMS – coded to N-1 short and 1 long pulse – e.g. coded as short-short-long (if set to 3 vibration pulses).
      • Network connected or Android Wear re-connect message – coded to all short pulses – e.g. code as short-short-short (if network disconnect is set to 3 vibration pulses)
      • 680newstraffic and Google Now alerts are coded as one short pulse
      • Rain Alerts are coded as two short pulses

Sources: Augmented SmartWatch Pro developer blog [1], [2]