Now if you think that everything you need was installed then congratulations you can now start creating your own awesome android app using Xamarin within Visual Studio.Ĭreating a Simple Android Wear Application

This will open the following window below: Just go to Tools > Android > Android SDK Manager. To ensure that everything you need is installed, you can verify it at the Android SDK Manager. Now when you launch Visual Studio, you should be able to see the following items below under Tools menu. You may need to restart your machine to reflect everything that is installed in your machine. Just follow the instructions in the download wizard until it's complete ( note that this may take longer depending on the frameworks that you are installing). (you can start with a free trial or a license version of it) Once you have installed the supported version of Visual Studio then go a head and download the Xamarin extension for Visual Studio here. In my case I have used Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate version. If you are using Visual Studio 2010, 2012 or 2013 then make sure it's a professional or higher version because the Xamarin extension for Visual Studio will only be supported for non-express editions.

So first you need to install Visual Studio. The first thing we need is to install the necessary tools. So that’s why I’m writing this post to guide new comers like me to get started with Android Wear application development. I am also aware that there's a bit of learning curve to deal with as working with this technologies is completely different compared to web development. This means that I will have to learn from scratch about how everything works with this technology and the android framework itself. Yes it's exciting but at the same time scary because I don't have any much experience on the technology, smart watch device and android stuffs. Having the opportunity to work with android wearable is very exciting as this is getting more popular nowadays.

Xamarin and Visual Studio are quite popular and stable platform for building real world apps.

I can take advantage of the cool features provided by Xamarin such as cloud testing and app monitoring.

Gives me less learning curve as I don’t have to learn how to use other frameworks, editors, tools and other programming languages to build native apps.

I am more familiar with Visual Studio development tools.

Xamarin allows you to build cross-platform apps (iOS, Andriod and Windows app) using C#.

I had the opportunity to explore on android wearable devices, particularly smart watches and have decided to use Xamarin and Visual Studio for the following reasons: Examples are Google Glass and Smart Watches. The terms “wearable devices“, and “wearables” all refer to electronic technologies or computers that are incorporated into items of clothing and accessories which can comfortably be worn on the body.

Xamarin visual studio express 2013