I know some of you already got the Watch, Congratulations. Now just like how you are ready, I’m here to talk about some newly launched Watch Apps from China for you to check out.
Chat
Firstly comes the Wechat. Considering the huge user base in China, I bet the wechat watch app would also be one of the first apps people had to download on their wrists. The app is not a surprise, basically everything what you can do on the phone app is available on a smaller screen, even the Moments feature. Honestly I thought I would never want to check Moments on the watch but it’s good to have for some heavy users.
The downside of the watch version, as I believe, is that it forces people to be on alert more than they need to. As a regular user of Wechat iPhone app, I’ve constantly found it annoying to receive overwhelming unread group messages, moments notifications or official accounts updates. Now along with the watch app, I feel like those unread messages just attached to my body. The notifications are instant and quick but it can get you distracted easily. You might want to turn off the notifications sometimes if you want to focus on something else other than your wrist.
Travel
The Spottly app, headquartered in Hong Kong is originally designed to help travellers discover, manage and share their favourite places by building travel collections. This time on a smaller screen, the watch app tries to extend the experience to quickly find nearby places of interest recommended by friends. When a user’s current location is nearby a spot saved in one Spottly travel collection, the app alerts them with a notification. The user can then obtain walking directions to the spot via the app. Check their great collection lists here if you are also a city explorer.
Founder Edwyn Chan notes that: “There are so many great places to go in the world that many people don’t know about. With the Spottly Apple Watch app, we are making it easier for people to find out about these places while on the go.”
Video
It’s surprising that Youku also tries to be one of the first watch apps. It works more like a smart TV remote to the phone app. If you are fanatic about watching videos, especially the series TV drama, you might need the app to notify you about any real -time updates of the new videos and you can also stream the videos with a couple of clicks before you watch them.
You can’t literally watch any videos on the watch, but you can browse the youku feed and plan your viewing list. The app also enables connection with nearby devices like smart TV boxes so you can control more devices other than the phone.
Payment
The Alipay Apple Watch app is very simple, made for the face to face payment scenarios. You can scan the QR code or bar code to pay bills or transfer money. Though it’s kind of competitive to the Apple Pay service which the company has been selling hard since launched, the Alipay app is still featured as one of the best new apps for the Apple Watch.
Payment apps actually work for me when I try to pay and hold the coffee without forgetting my phone on the cafe counter every day. However, to switch from phone scan to watch scan sounds no difference to me. We’ll see which way is more payment-friendly.
Photo
If you find your tons of photos on your iPhone to be a disaster, you might want to check the PhotoTime watch app. Created by an image recognition API company from China, this app helps you to find the photo you want instantly from your phone, or should I say the watch? Imagine you are at a party, talking to your friends about a bizarre rainbow scene you’ve seen last week. “Let me show you the photos I took!”you said excitedly. Usually to get lost in your photo chaos before your friend lost her interest is what would happen next. However, with the phototime app, you just need to speak out the word “Rainbow” to your watch, and it will automatically finds all the Rainbow photos from your album. What’s even better, the company has accumulated huge database for computer vision which means it can find your photos almost perfectly correctly by recognition. It’s like google your own photo album but with more accurate results.
You can also search your photos by location, friend’s name or object. For example, say “Charlie Sheng” to your watch, and you’ll see a pretty slide of all the photos of me (if you have any). Product Director Yushan Chen of the company revealed that over the past years the company had been working hard on the recognition API to help other startups see more correctly with computers. “We kept a low profile. Finally we want to do something cool on our own. We simply hope users can enjoy the photos and the beautiful moments with their friends with ease.”