The first reviews of the Moto360 are in, and they’re basically all unanimous: this is the first proper smartwatch, and if you want to buy a smartwatch today, this is the one you should go for. Reception is apparently good, since Motorola states they are already sold out – but they’re not providing any numbers, so take that with a grain of salt.
That being said, there’s one huge drawback to the Moto360, and in my view, it’s a massive dealbreaker: battery life if poor. Very poor. Most reviews are reporting about 12 hours of battery life, which, for a watch, is completely, utterly, and wholly unacceptable. People had to put it back on its chargers late in the afternoon, which effectively makes it a useless device.
Apple, it’s your turn. I wonder if you’ve solved the battery problem.
Personallly, I like more the LG option, looks more elegant to me, the fact that the Mot 360 it is actually Moto 350 doesn’t cut it for me.
I’ll stick with my beat up old Pebble until I see something with equivalent or better battery life, especially at that price. I don’t need Google Now on my wrist, standard push notifications are all I really need.
The LG does look nice though.
Probably picking one up tomorrow, battery life isn’t really a deal breaker for me. I charge my phone, after all.
Yea, good luck with that. They are already out of stock.
Edited 2014-09-06 01:51 UTC
That’s nice. I have a Best Buy a few minutes away. I do not live in a big town. Already confirmed they’re in stock.
We have the LG one at home, and it does over 30 hours of battery life. So I’m not sure why the Moto one is so bad at it.
The Moto’s display (1.65 inches, or 1.56 I see both reported…) appears to be larger than the LG’s (1.3 inches). That could be part of the reason.
Edited 2014-09-06 19:07 UTC
The difference in screen size does not seem dramatic enough to be directly correlated with the dramatic difference in battery performance between the two devices.
Not to entirely account for it, but at least partially. It’s at least 33% larger, and energy usage on displays may not be linear. I.e., 33% larger may be 45% more power, http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_lcdleddisplay.htm.
The reason seems to be that it uses an TI OMAP 3 instead of a Snapdragon 400 like the other devices.
Some guy said that his LG was actually less troublesome than his pebble because he knew the LG lasted only a day so he charged it every night. The pebble lasted between 2 and 7 days so he would always forget to charge it and it died.
I thought that was an interesting point. Unless we can get to a month of battery life I don’t know if it really matters whether a watch lasts one or two or three days.
But 12 hours is ridiculous. You want at least 36 hours I think for the daily charge with buffer for battery degradation.
As for apple’s entry, let’s all realize that they haven’t solved the battery problem. It’s completely physically impossible so stop hoping.
The only thing they may have is a better use for a smartwatch. Then people might actually be willing to tolerate the battery life.
It’s exceptionally unlikely that they’ve tripled the energy density of small batteries (though not impossible – Voyager 1 and 2 continue to run on batteries, and I doubt they’ve connected to a USB port in decades 😉 ), but that’s not the only way to solve the battery life problem.
A clever design might consume far less energy; capture energy potential from the body’s chemistry or its motion, light, or wind; receive power from a larger source transmitted wirelessly or via skin; or an approach less obvious than these.
Back in the mechanical watch days, I owned a watch with a dial that perpetually glowed in dark and that never needed to be rewound, and it didn’t need a battery at all. But now, acceptable battery life is impossible?
Tech advances. Problems are solved unexpectedly. It’s what humans do.
Edited 2014-09-06 10:54 UTC
I think they are powered by radioactive decay.
This. With an e-ink display that won’t have to fight ambient light. Or we could just agree smartwatches are a manufactured need. I am more interested in Android auto if kits for existing cars are made.
Edited 2014-09-06 11:16 UTC
Yep. The glow-in-the-dark watch face was nuclear powered as well.
Can’t be worse that the software in the Ford C-MAX. We rented one for the drive to Florida, as the gas savings paid for the rental fee, and it was a joy to drive – except the incredibly crappy software. It refused to recognize my Nexus 4, even as a USB disk, and never once recognized a voice command successfully.
Ford needs Android. Badly.
This is because Android doesn’t have the “mount as USB storage” anymore and each device needs it’s own MTP drivers.
Ideally, there would be ONE protocol for viewing the files of a smartphone and accepting navigation info, but OS vendors will not play ball.
Nope. MTP is MTP is MTP.
If you’re thinking of the drivers Windows needs, thats because Windows for some reason doesn’t associate its’ builtin MTP driver with anything which advertises the USB MTP class.
All the “MTP drivers” for various phones are doing is telling it “Yes, this is an MTP device. Use your builtin driver”
Voyager used RTGs instead of batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Those dials were radioactive (radium). The watch was powered by kinetic energy from wrist movement which kept the mainspring wound.
Yes, the symbols “;”, “-“, and “)”, when used together, represent a wink, typically to indicate that something is a joke (see dictionary.reference.com/browse/wink).
You see, the OP was saying it was impossible to solve the “battery problem” with smartwatches, and I was making the point that “battery problems” (such as how to power a deep space probe for decades when it’s too far away to be recharged via USB) can in fact be solved. (The reference to USB was also part of the joke; no need to point out that USB hadn’t been invented when the Voyager spacecraft were launched!)
The term “nuclear powered” might also has suggested to you that I knew the spacecraft and earlier perpetual watch face illumination were actually powered by radioactive decay rather than chemical reactions. Sorry if I was being too obscure.
Yeah, I kinda assumed everybody here knew that, too. And that it wasn’t a “battery”, either. Just another example to show that the “battery problem” isn’t “completely physically impossible” to solve for smartwatches.
Yeah, but in some cases just because something is labeled as a joke does not mean that it’s a) funny or b) based on correct factual information. ;-P
We’re talking about Apple’s watch which will be released/announced in 2 days. For that specific product, it is in fact completely physically impossible that they solved the battery problem.
Since we had (in effect) perpetual energy sources over 30 years ago, I see no reason to claim it is “physically impossible” to deliver one today. Highly unlikely, sure. But not impossible.
The reported battery life seems in line with my experience with the LG G Watch (12-14 hours). I’ve had the same result with 3 different units. I know some people are reporting much more, but I can’t get it to happen. And yeah, its not ideal because you need a mid-day boost.
My hope is that the increased power efficiency in Android L will provide a “field upgrade” for these early watches in the field.
If Motorola say that they are sold out it probably means that their stock is sold out because retailers have bought it all.
It doesn’t mean that retailers are out of stock however.
My buddy got his Moto last night. It’s nice to look at I think, but the display resolution is actually disappointing.
First day means heavy use, of course, so battery was down to 40% after six hours, but with normal use I guess it’ll keep going until bedtime.
Let’s hope Apple does indeed solve the battery problem.
Why don’t they put an e-Ink display on it? Who needs colors on a watch? That would easily make the battery last a week, if not more. Additionally, the display would actually be visible in sunlight.
Edited 2014-09-06 18:07 UTC
Because these things are more like modern-day fashion accessories than smart watches. I doubt many people would settle for an e-ink display, when most people are really just buying them to look cool.
Sure looks cool to have a watch where the screen is blank 99% of the time!
True dat.
Settle?? I’d happily wear a watch with an e-ink display, especially if it lasted even a few days longer than the Pebble. My wife’s Kindle Paperwhite is so much easier on the eyes than my Fire HDX. If I didn’t use the Fire as my do-everything tablet, i.e. if I just wanted something to read on, I would have gotten a Paperwhite instead.
Basically, it comes down to what you want it to do. A watch that gives you notifications, is easy to read in daylight, and has battery life measured in weeks? E-ink, please. A surrogate Android device that does a lot of what your phone already does? Looks like you’ll have to settle for battery life measured in hours and a screen that is hard to read in sunlight.
I don’t disagree with you, but you’re really preaching function over form. Which, in this day and age when customization means little more than ‘what color do you want it in’, could get you burned at the stake
I’d argue even on form it looks a bit stupid. It looks ugly to be wearing a watch without a face.
I got mine after giving a deposit to hold it. Its kind of big for my tastes, but the screen looks bright and the OS is responsive.
I’ve been using it rather extensively which isn’t how I’d normally use it but so far I’d say about 7 hours in I started getting anxious.
The other interesting part of this is that I had to get an Android phone in order to use this watch
. All I have to say is that perception is a bitch. Android is actually extremely cohesive and well put together now.
This phone is an absolute joy to use. I was rocking an iPhone but I just can’t get over the fact that there’s no app drawer. I like having a distinction between my “pinned” apps and all of my apps.
Going to install Android L now ..
Oh, edit: The phone is a Nexus 5. Its very, very nice.
Edited 2014-09-06 21:23 UTC
I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how stable and cohesive Android has become lately. It’s still not quite where WP8 is for me, but trying out a two year old flagship HTC phone with 4.3 for the past few weeks has been eye-opening. I can only imagine how much better a newer phone/OS combo would be.
This N5 runs really well. And the battery life is bar none the best I’ve experienced on a phone.
Was also pleasantly surprised it included Qi wireless charging, so all of my wireless accessories from Nokia worked out of the box. Awesome.
Did you get official update or did you have to root it?
Official, not rooted, because my carrier doesn’t play nice with custom ROMs.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4074189/osnews/htc.png
4.3 was the final version released by HTC for this phone, and it had to be sideloaded because it changed partition sizes and OTA wouldn’t work.
Something must be going on with the mirassol display which nobody has picked up and htc just announced cancelation of they’re upcoming smart watch that was going to use it. All I could think off is possibly a pricing issue . I have had the toq , pebble , some offshoot Chinese models and now that lg . the Qualcomm toq with the mirassol display can’t be beaten. The screen is visible 100% in daylight , the more light the more visible it is. The battery life can hit a week also. The only thing that for some might be a drawback is the colors are not as rich. It has an 80’s kind of tone to it which I
myself have no issue with sense I like that vintage look. The pebble I tried that crap on for fifteen minutes took a look at the display from certain angles and it looked like a monkey had pissed oil in it. The resolution was so bad the watchhands looked like staircases. I repackaged it back up and sent it to amazon. The lg is not bad at all. Battery life is bout 30 hour for me and it charges extremely fast. I’m.not a fan of voice commands and the interface of android wear IMO sucks. The moto 360 when I noticed it has a life of barely a day I skipped it. Real shame that mirassol has not been picked up. I’m Im waiting for the Lg r
I’ve been using my mobile as a watch for years.
Ever since I started taking them with me I stopped wearing one on my wrist.
Apple apparently hasn’t solved the issue. Charge nightly. That’s too much charging.
They need to take out the stuff that is power hungry. Lighted display. Replace with a reflective color display.