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Motorola’s Director of Product Marketing Lally Narwal took to Motorola’s official blog to talk about a new software update rolling out to the Moto 360. It’s the 2nd update since the smartwatch launched back in September and where Android Wear 4.4.W.1 mainly address battery life concerns, the latest version — Android Wear 4.4W.2 — polishes things up a bit. Here’s everything you can look forward to when it hits your device starting today.
- Smart Battery Saving – When your battery hits 15%, your Moto 360 will turn off ambient mode, so you don’t have to remember to.
- Timely Time Checks – Moto 360 will synchronize the time with your phone more often to make sure it is up to the minute.
- User Interface Tweaks – We observed with consumers that there are many times where you want to use your Moto 360 as truly a classic watch—a beautiful way to see the time. A new gesture now lets you see the full watch face without permanently dismissing a notification. Just touch the top of a notification and swipe down. You’ll see the notification again when you have another high priority notification.
- Mood Lighting – Moto 360 will adjust to the lighting of the room while charging, so that it isn’t too bright or too dark.
- Readying the wires for Bluetooth – There are a couple of under-the-hood enhancements that will pave the way for connecting Bluetooth headsets to the watch.
- Bug Squashing – As usual, bugs are squashed to enhance the overall user experience.
Motorola says to make sure your watch has at least an 80% charge on it and connect to your phone via Bluetooth. Because it’s rolling out in phases, don’t freak if you don’t see the update just yet — it’ll get to ya. And while Android 4.4W.2 is also hitting the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live, we’ll have to wait for an official word on anything new hitting those smartwatches as a result.
[Motorola]
So what is the average battery life for a 360 that people are getting? Been debating on buying one
I bought one last week. The battery is perfectly fine. I have no issues using it for 14+ hours. And it charges really fast.
This is true. Mine goes from 0 to 25 in about 10 minutes and is fully charged in about an hour
And because charging it is so simple with the qi charger, I often throw it on to top it off when i pop into he house for a bit during the day if I know it’s going to be a late night. For example during the after work shower…
Only had mine for 5 days, easily 16+ hours with charge left at the end of the day. I get a lot of whatsapp notifications and texts on a daily basis.
I was worried too, but thankfully found that the previous update must have really sorted the original issues. Couldn’t be happier.
I get between 20-24hr with the stock faces and between 12-16hrs when using facer.
That’s not too bad. But please tell me, that is with ambient mode turned on…..
Off. Brightness at at 1. I get 12hrs with ambient mode on (Moto faces) about 10 hrs with facer.
I have to agree that Facer seems to really suck the battery down for me on both my watch and phone. Hoping the next iteration of AW adds official watch face support and eliminates the 3rd party penalty drain.
Last about 24 hours and fully charges in about 30 minutes to an hour.
I took mine off the charger at 9am. It’s now 9:57 pm and I’m at 58%. Ambient mode on. So on pace for about 26 hours. My nexus 5 with a stock rom and Franco kernel is sitting on it’s charger right now because it was at 15% at 930pm with 2 hours of screen time. The watch will make it to the morning so it works if I stay somewhere, and it outlasts my phone. Both have wireless chargers sitting on my desk so charging either is not that much of an inconvenience.
What is the purpose of ambient mode?
ambient mode is the moto 360 version of “always on”.
for the following, assume the watch sitting vertical is 0* (wrist fully turned towards me, as if it were a clock on the wall) watch sitting flat on wrist/horizontal is 90* and watch upside down vertical (wrist 100% turned away from me)
Non ambient mode: Screen turns on when i turn my wrist past about 45*, when I touch the screen, or when i click the watch crown.
ambient mode: if watch is 115* – 180 *(the angle as i turn it away where i can no longer see any visible screen the screen is off. If the watch does not move for more then 2-5 minutes, the screen turns off. 115*-45* watch sits in a dim, grayscale mode with no second hand moving and no cards showing. this is so you can check th time at a glance. if watch is turned to the 45* to 0* window it will light up fully again for about 7 seconds, then dim itself back into the grayscale mode. I like it a lot in ambient mode.
ill link a video in a min.
ambient mode i get prob around 12 hours avg…i leave for work 7:30 and when i get home around 6 i got about 20% left usually….beauty of the watch is if i got somewhere to go after work during the time i change and get ready to leave again i can get a full charge for the night…so bat life hasnt been an issue for me…with ambient mode off i can prob go till next morning
I have a problem with my G3 and Moto 360 working together. I cannot reply to texts from my watch using the stock SMS app. It works well on the phone, but at least I could reply on my S5 at the time. Now, it’s not the same :(. I need help, please? Does any OEM’s app work with it excluding Samsung and Pure Android? I am thinking about the HTC One M8.
Not all messaging apps work with the watch
They need to fix that. What’s the point of using Hangouts when the LG Stock App is clearly better for me? I might use Hangouts for now just to get the feature. Quite the bummer. If I had known the LG had this problem, I wouldn’t have gotten it.
I’m sure it happens often not only with SMS but other apps as well. The developers have to add support, which is strange considering it’s LG AND they have a Wear of their own. I hope the new Messenger app works, it should considering it’s by Google.
Which new messenger app?
Messenger.
https://phandroid.com/2014/10/20/check-out-the-new-messenger-google-play-music-and-more-leaked-android-5-0-lollipop/
Okay, good. It force closes right now. Damn you Google and your purposely coded error.
Try Wear Messenger, it may not be “pretty”, but it technically gets the job done
Mine didn’t work either (GS5 Active) so I’m using hangouts. When I would try to reply on the stock app, it would just pop up a green check as if a message was sent. I figured google just wanted us to use their software hahaha.
I hate using Hangouts just to get the watch to work. Pretty pathetic how OEMs cannot work with Wear. It’s a universal watch, not a properitary device.
only hangouts works on the android wear i was told.
Yeah, I found that out too. LG has to get on their game. Their stock app is so much better than Hangouts. I may need to sell my G3 eventually. Deciding if I should do it now or later. Might get that Nexus 6.
Wonder why my previous comment regarding the update is for all ANDROID WEAR watches has been deleted………….
Disqus glitch, not in the moderation queue – sorry about that!
THX.
So is this a small bug fix release and not the “2.0” rumored release?
This article says 2.0 was likely pushed to November: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/09/04/source-android-wear-2-0-will-be-released-on-october-15th/ , I expect they added this release as a stop-gap until 2.0 is ready.
“Timely Time Checks – Moto 360 will synchronize the time with your phone more often to make sure it is up to the minute.”
Hmmm how often does it check as standard and how often does it do it in timely time check mode? Wouldn’t more timely checks mean less battery life?
Isn’t the bracelet version supposed to be out now? Take my money already Moto!
Just got the same update on my LG G WATCH,booting up as we speak……………