By Discuss Android Wear and the Moto 360 on Android Forums!
One thing that’s sucked about this whole smart watch craze over the past couple of years is that people seemed to be OK with the fact that they looked like horrible gadget rejects from Power Rangers. Sure, they’re for geeky people, but that doesn’t mean they should look geeky.
But things have been improving as of late, and we’re happy about that. We might have even settled with the beautiful Sony SmartWatch 2, but then Motorola went and introduced the Moto 360 as one of the first Android Wear smart watches.
This beauty had most of your jaws dropping yesterday, and for good reason. Finally, a smart watch crafted by engineers who wanted to make something that could fit an elegant ensemble as well as it could improve your digital life. Finally, something that doesn’t have four edges sharper than the steak knives in my kitchen drawer. Finally, a watch that doesn’t activate our gag reflexes the moment we glance at it.
All over-exaggerations aside, the Moto 360 is one pretty smart watch, but do you think it’s the sexiest out there? We covered a whole lot of them in our top 20 smart watches post yesterday in case you needed a quick reminder of what the competition looks like. If so, let us know in the poll below. If not, well, we want to hear what you think could take that particular ribbon home. Don’t forget to leave a comment elaborating on your thoughts!
[polldaddy poll=7894071]
The Moto 360 for sure
Moto 360 is the first smartwatch I’ve ever actually wanted. I still don’t know why the heck I’d want a smartwatch and I don’t think I’d find it very useful… but i still want it.
You know, in the day since they announced Android wear, I’ve been noticing all the times that I would rather look at my wrist than pull my phone out of my pocket. It’s much more often than I would have guessed.
Ultimate first world problem right there
haha, yep!
It’s time we move past “pocket watches”… a second time :)
I never even noticed…
I’m more of a wrist watch guy myself
(mind blown) Haha, I can’t believe I’ve never looked at it that way. Before the first time came around, though, of pocket watches were the sh$& for anyone who was anyone.
It’s convenient to have a quick glance @ notifications.
After a couple days of use, you’ll actually find it somewhat liberating to not be reaching for your phone countless times a day.
I’m surprised nobody has teamed up with established watch makers out there like Seiko or Omega to make something REALLY sexy.
I am ready to toss my Pebble for one and I wear my Pebble every day.
I haven’t worn a watch in over 15 years and i will be picking up one of these for sure
I can’t wait to see what Fossil will have to offer!
I think I might get one, depending on the price. I definitely agree that this thing blows the doors off of anything else I’ve seen so far as far how it looks etc….
I feel like the Moto 360 is like Glass 3.0. Watching the developer videos it all seems like the design guidelines are almost the same thing they said when glass came out. Not that I’m dissing them for that, it makes sense to me. I’m just saying, I see this as a wrist-mounted version of glass sans camera. For that reason, if the price is reasonable (unlike glass so far), I might pick this up as an affordable option which probably wont have the legal issues of wearing it while driving (unlike glass :-).
Lastly, I’m very interested in of course… battery life, and what display technology they’re using in this thing.
I’m assuming LED so it can only power the lit pixels to save on battery life. Similar to the Active display on the Moto X
I think you mean OLEAD, that’s what the Moto X uses
LED uses a backlight which burns the entire screen even if one pixel is on.
No biggie, I knew what you meant ;-)
Technically its AMOLED, but I thought LED would be clear enough as that is the standard now in smartphones that use LED technology. Either way, we are on the same page.
you are correct its amoled…and this is prob what it is, not led…amoled only the pixels needed for light are lit, blacks are just turned off pixels…this makes sense for battery life on a screen like this thats a watch with black background
He’s fine with LED. You can keep adding additional letters all you want up to Samsung’s Super AMOLED+ HD. Bottom line it’s made of a grid of organic LEDs.
The display industry did consumers a great disservice suddenly marketing LED backlit LCD displays as “LED”.
Will these have a battery life of 4-6 years like my current watches?
Does your current watch have a rechargeable battery?
No … but opening it once or twice a decade is quite acceptable :)
I realize you are somewhat trolling and you obviously realize the battery won’t last that long. Hell, my watch battery lasted 5 years and now will cost $275 to replace the battery…..WTF? I think I’ll sell the thing and use the money on a smart watch.
For sale: Used but in great condition Tag Heuer Link 40mm….you need to get a new battery :-)
Of course I was just kidding :)
It costs $10-25 to replace a battery at a jeweler or mall kiosk, or you can do it yourself for under <$10. I used to do it myself, until I started wearing nicer watches.
I definitely understand the potential for these devices in the context of athletics, where you might not have your phone on you or be able to reach/use it, and/or you want to check out your vitals and environmental stats (distance, speed, etc) later (e.g. Fitbit). But at the same time you, you probably don't always want these distractions/information at times apart from your phone. You probably just want to record the info, and then sync it with your phone/tablet/pc for presentation.
Does your current watch notify you of a text messages and phone calls? Monitor your sleep patterns and wake you up at a prime time? Allow you to remotely change music selections, access the current traffic and weather?
This is why Google buying Motorola was a good thing. Hopefully Lenovo doesn’t mess up the company tooooo much.
The only good thing Lenovo can do is increase the shipments of Moto products to get it to more countries faster. Everything else of Motorola should not be touched.
One point I haven’t heard mentioned yet is in regards to battery life savings….on your phone. If you have a device such as this for notifications you will not have to constantly pull out your phone and turn the screen on, etc. So even if this device has 1-2 day battery life it will easily allow most people’s phones to save their own battery life. Seems like a good trade off.
This does indeed seem to be the case. Whether it was the GALAXY GEAR paired up w/my NOTE 3 or my QUALCOMM TOQ paired up w/the G2 or G FLEX, it is not uncommon to still have 65-70% battery remaining after 10-12 hrs of phone on-time.
The B/T connection required has apparently little impact on battery usage.
This image says it all.
To say we have a winner would be the understatement of the year.. This poll is an outright slaughter. I believe if this watch succeeds as I suspect it will this may very well be the trend setter for future smart watches as this looks damn good and not big bulky and flashy.
I have and love the design of the metal band SW2. I’d still pick one of these up though so I’d have a choice of round versus square. People already love my SW2.
“Zordon! Come in Zordon!”
To be fair, the Moto 360 is the only one that passes off as a watch without an obscure design. I don’t mean their designs are bad, but they’re not like a typical watch. I mean I don’t think of a G-Shock as the first one that comes to mind. I think of something with a circular design. Good choices for many consumers, so it’s all about preference. I just want the Moto 360 since they know how to make long lasting battery tweaks and the commercial showed off the benefits of Google Service based UI or Nexus UI.
They can have my money today if i could preorder…this watch looks great…i love watches this is the first smart watch id even consider…i think the idea of a smart watch is silly but when your in a loud place and to have a little notification go off on your wrist so u can check and see when you otherwise wouldnt hear or feel your phone is a nice idea…thats about the extent of it for me…this looks like a real nice timepiece with smartwatch capabilities which is what i been waiting for…..plus the idea you can possibly change the face and bands to match different outfits is huge in my book buy one watch match it with red or blue or w.e im wearing
The Omate TrueSmart is gorgeous, it will be a major seller…
Unless it goes cheap I doubt it will have the name and budget behind it to get really huge. I backed and then cancelled after I saw how childish the CEO was.
From the /renders/, yes. It’s the first smartwatch I’ve seen that might make me give up my Pebble. But we’ll have to see what the final product is like. There were a lot of people (here included) going on and on about how the Galaxy Gear was going to be the best thing ever, and then it actually came out.
No denying the watch looks fantastic. I’m not sold on the Google wear yet. I had a V1 gear, which I returned before I wouldn’t be able to. The lack of any water resistance, the poor notifications, etc.
The gear 2 seems to have fixed many of these issues. I’m not sure if Google wear will not have any sort of typing capability or not, seems like the gear 2 will & personally I would like to have that capability, obviously not to write out a book, but for those quick replies, that I would not like to do while holding watch towards face & talking to it :/
I love Google now & I’m also sure that the rest of the software will be great & that developers will flick to it, over any other system including the gear’s tizen, I just hope there will be some sort of typing options :/ Otherwise I would say, looks wise, would definitely go with 360
Form follows function. A round watch design derived from from its mechanics and displaying time in hours and minutes via its pointers. I’m proudly wearing a Swiss mechanical watch that rewinds itself.
I absolutely hate that designers trying to press a smart watch design into a shape that is not meant for it. It just looks totally wrong to me. If I would ever wear a smart watch (and I’m keen), then it’s shape has to be functional, using screen space in a rectangle just seems natural for that.
I prefer the square faced watch. Round probably looks nicer as a watch face, but I am more interested in the functionality of a smartwatch and I want a square screen. I’m a little nervous that that LG is monochrome, in which case all bets are off. I want color.
I won’t be able to afford the Moto 360, looks too sexy. HOPEFULLY the Nexus watch will be a fair stand in.
No because I haven’t seen a smartwatch. Only a smartwatch prototype with a real time watch face.
Go watch the Hangout video from today. The lead designer is wearing a working prototype and you can clearly see him navigating the UI at multiple points in the video.
I’ll probably not have a smart watch until swatch comes out with something. simple is best.
I never wanted a smart watch… until this one. Motorola got this design just right.
i’m not a watch expert… but aren’t those sub dials on the 360 showing time in other timezones than the main watch face? if so, shouldn’t the minute hands match up? do some timezones alter time by minutes not hours?
look closer…
Looks to me like they all line up at a little past 52 minutes…
On the image of the 360 watch face–do the hour and minutes hands look the same length? one doesn’t appear much shorter than the other at quick glance. the sub-dials do not have this issue. no worries though as its all software fixable!
The Hour hand appears to be thicker, like many watches.
Moto 360 is to smartwatches what the iPhone was to smartphones.
What the Moto 360 will be part of a controlled eco system that will only be compatible with other devices and software controlled by it’s manufacturer and will bring features to the market that other watches have been doing for years and the press will rejoice for the Moto 360 inventing those features? ;)
those who are intellectually honest must admit Steve Jobs and his contribution to the smartphone world. There is no doubt that for a while the iPhone was better than any android phone. Android has passed up IOS, but it took a while for the OS to mature. I have never owned an iphone and never will, but one cannot simply dismiss Apple.
Didn’t you see my winking smilie :)
I remember using a sony ericsson w810-i
it took panoramic pictures.
it also could send and receive pictures
It had a dedicated music player that would run in the background while I performed other tasks
It handled html surprisingly well
It took expandable memory with at the time meant an 8gb pro duo memory card loaded with music.
It came with in ear headphones
WITH mic
The battery lasted forever
I could download and move any music around that I wanted without the limits of drm tags or devices credentials
It didn’t shatter the moment I thought about dropping it etc.
the iphones have just barely caught up to the technology of this device 6 years later.
Steve jobs wasn’t god he was an innovation hater.
He innovated for a short while
then litigated until the day he lied.
He openly admitted to wanting to destroy android in his famous qoute by any means necessary which means not by innovation and building a better product but but squashing the competition.
When the iphone wanted lte they lacked the patents so the leaned on htc. Htc owned over 25 lte patents. Knowing they couldn’t win in court and would be bankrupt htc gave in and gave the patents to apple.
Those who don’t wear fedoras and live in a euphoric world know the truth. apple made a mediocre phone for 2ish years. thats the end of the story.
I really hope it will have Tasker integration like the Pebble. That will allow it to do almost anything, including home automation stuff.
That is the coolest thing since sliced bread. “Turn on jacuzzi” as a command for your smartwatch or “turn on desktop” while you’re not at home so you can remote into it. It would be like your house is always listening to you.