Had some interest in reposting this... so here I go.

APPS

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  Wear Mini Launcher : MUST HAVE. You should already know this one. Became SLIGHTLY laggy on AW5, but not that bad after a restart on my GWR. Most used "app" on my watch, but is really a staple of the UX, IMO.

  
  


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  Wear Apps Tracker : MUST HAVE. Know when apps are installed, updated, or removed. The phone app also lists all the apps on your watch. Very useful.

  
  


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  Aeris Wear : MUST HAVE. The BEST wear weather app, IMO. Has multiple notification windows that are customizable. For me, I have current weather, extended forcast, local radar map, regional radar map, local satellite map, and regional satellite map that I can swipe through. I keep this card up 24/7. The app on watch is pretty nice too.

  
  


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  Hourly Chime : MUST HAVE. Vibrate your watch on the hour. You can customize the vibrate pattern. Does what it claims, and I like it.

  
  


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  Remote Shot - pic: Must have app. I think I paid for this one, but it's worth it. Take a pic from your phone with your watch. Many controls from the watch. Nice implementation, and very user friendly.

  
  


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  Wear Phone : MUST HAVE. Control your phone from your wrist. I use this while driving. My phone is connected to my car, but I find the voice prompts a PITA on ford sync. I swipe in Wear Mini Launcher to Phone (I have it set as a favorite in WML), select my favorites icon, select my contact, and call. Viola. Simple, fast, perfect.

  
  


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  StayLit Wear : Control how long your face stays lit before going to dim mode. I originally passed on this, as I didn't need it. The Main face I use, A45, has it's own setting to change this. However, once I started playing with the Krona Sunlight Face, reviewed below, I realized the timing was too short to see all the data the face had on it until I got use to it, so I installed this to extend the time. It works as expected, so far.

  
  


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  @here : When selected on watch, it will give a notification card with your location information, including approx address.

  
  


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  Evernote for Android Wear : My preferred Notes app. Very nice Wear implementation. Easy to take notes, and to retreive them as well. Does what I expect.

  
  


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  Glympse : This will start location tracking through glympse and send the notification to your recipient. Easy implementation.

  
  


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  WearBucks : Pay for Starbucks with your watch. This has gotten me the most "OOoo's" and "Ahhhh's" with my GWR. Easily one of the most used apps on my watch when it did work. EDIT: I recently started using another app for this functionality since it seems it was never updated for AW5. You can try it, but if it doesn't work you can goto the next app int eh list...

  
  


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  CoffeeTime : Does what I said WearBucks does, but doesn't show your balance on the watch. If WearBucks updated I would go back to that, but this does the trick in the meantime. It does have a watch face if that's your thing.

  
  


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  tinyCam Monitor PRO : See webcams on your watch. Nice and easy. Must have if you run webcams. For me, it's good to spy on the kiddo when I'm away from my phone.

  
  


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  Reddit for Wear : Hi reddit. I'm watching you with this. Sends me updates when I get replies, or new posts are made in my specified subreddits.

  
  


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  Metam : This is for pilots. On your phone you can setup airports and pull up those airports METAR info. I haven't played around with the phone app itself, but it looks pretty nice, too. I had tried one other, but the other required voice commands to input the airport - I prefer having a set list, or nearest option.

  
  


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  Multi Calculator : Calculator for your phone... Works. Includes scientific calculations and history as well. Again, it does what it promises well.

  
  


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  Calendar For Android Wear : Pretty straightforward. Might be better options.

  
  


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  Timer For Android Wear : Timer App. I haven't played with others, but this one is really nice. Easy to use.

  
  


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  TrackID : I have not yet used this. I tried an early version before their most recent release and it would never recognize a song for me, but right now this is the only song recognition app for Wear that I'm awear (pun) of. It may work awesome right now - try it.

  
  


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  Voice Recorder : Record voice notes... While I haven't had a need to use this yet, I imagine it will come in very handy at some point. It's easy to use, and the phone app also works well.

  
  


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  Cyclo Pong : Pong-like game. Decent. I'm not a big wear gamer, but this can kill a few minutes at a time.

  
  

FACES

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  Pujie Black - pic: MUST HAVE. This is probably one of the most popular faces available, and for good reason. Very cool implementation, and many ways to customize it to you. This is usually my goto face.

  
  


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  WatchFace Shop for AndroidWear : This is the app for all the faces by Smartwatch Bureaux. They have many face variants, but they are some of the best designed faces I've seen. I highly recommend this app to see thier options. It's updated with new faces pretty often.

  
  


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  A45 Watchface by Smartwatch Bureaux - pic: While I'm trying to keep other faces on more often, this one probably gets the most use. One of the main reason is that like many of Smartwatch Bureaux's faces, the settings give you the ability to change the ambient mode color, and brightness. I keep my screen always on, and set my ambient mode face to be all red, which is better to avoid burn in, yet is very easy to read at night yet does not blind you. (Try driving with a bright green watchface and you'll understand the annoyance). I have a hard time deciding if this or Pujie Black is my favorite overall. I won't review the others from Smartwatch Bureaux, but I will suggest F02 and F03 (pic) - they are somewhat similar to this one with similar options in a different layout. I keep them all on my phone as options. If you are coming from a G-Shock, the layouts will be fmiliar.

  
  


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  Krona Sunlight - pic: My newest face as of 1/10/15. This is the first face I've found that really tries to do something different, and I kind of like it. While there aren't many options to change colors or arrangement, it gives you a lot of info. It can be intimidating to learn it at first, but once you understand it - it reads easily. It's basically a 24 hour forcast showing temp scale throughout the next 24 hours, cloud coverage through the next 24 hours, precipitation through the next 24 hours, precipitation type, and time it will be that type through the next 24 hours, and sunrise and sunset. Oh yeah, I guess it also shows the time. That's important for a watch, too. Right? Easiest way to read this is yellow = day, purple = night. Long yellow/purple lines = higher temp, while shorter lines = lower temp. The yellow and purple lines also have shading towards gray indicating cloudiness. Outside ring is the precipitation. Thicker it is, the more heavy it is. Blue=rain, White=snow. Get all that? Probably not. It takes a bit, but it's worth checking out.

  
  


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  Skymaster Pilot Watch - pic: Very cool looking face. With 5.0 they included some decent customization, including adding your own text for the face. The downside, though, is ambient mode looks pretty bad.

  
  


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  RichWatchFace : Decent for a bit of a classy look. If it's an analog watchface, I need a digital reading as well. So I like this one. It doesn't see as much use given all the other awesome ones I outlined - but you may love it.

  
  


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  WatchMaker : Load .watchmaker faces.

  
  


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  Facer : Load .face faces.
  
  Both offer similar options. I have both beacuse some people make faces for only one of these.

  
  


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  Snuto4 by Agfre for Watchmaker - pic: Found on facerepo.com. I like the look. Simple as that. Easy to modify, which I did for the ambient mode. I only wish the outside ring would act as a compass.

  
  


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  Optimal Minimal for Facer - pic: I like the clean look, but with good info. A bit classy. This is like a mix of the default "Suit" face and Pujie Black.

  
  

Do you have an app you want thoughts on? Let me know. Even Beta stuff. I'm a web services developer and mobile app tester for a living, so abuse my cheap labor, please.