Why I ultimately gave up on the Moto 360 smartwatch

Smartwatches have failed to revolutionize the mobile tech world, and there's a long way to go until they really hit homes, but where's the culprit?

Numerous portals and individual tech bloggers almost unanimously hailed 2014 as the year of wearable tech, but was it really? Although the idea caught my attention to some extent, I've always felt it lacks a proper boom. After the initial "wow" effect, most people quickly realized how little the said wrist gadgetry has to offer, and how much still has to be done to reach anyone beyond the early adopters and gadget lovers. The efforts of various companies, inluding Pebble, LG, Motorola and Asus, instead of a full-blown tech revolution, brought about what felt to me more like a balloon deflating with a slight squeak. Even the Moto 360, possibly the best looking smart timepiece, designed with invaluable support of Google itself, was lacking in many ways. Bottom line: smartwatches have failed to redefine the mobile tech world, and there's a long way to go until they really hit homes, but where's the culprit?

Although I'm going to focus primarily on the Moto 360 smartwatch, major complaints I provided might as well apply to most smartwatches around.

Battery

While reading reviews of Moto 360 (before I ultimately bought the watch), I often found myself skipping articles or videos directly to the battery section, looking forward to see way above 13-24h battery life. No such luck for the Moto 360, and thus for most smartwatches (Pebble not included, but it uses different display technology). Poor battery life sits among Moto 360's most serious woes.

Battery tech in general is possibly among the major things that hinder smartwatches from really taking off. After all, for most people, one day battery life seems ridiculous, and so it does for me. This problem is not necessarily limited to smartwatches, as most smartphones rarely make two days either. Conversely, watchmakers got us used to changing batteries every five years. No wonder that we're finding it hard to accept this tiny smartwatch is, next to a laptop and a smartphone (and maybe a few more stuff), another piece of tech we have to charge every day when we get home in the evening. For most people this thing alone is just unacceptable. The increasing amount of clutter aound us that won't make it through two days of use is just getting impossible to handle.

The thing that the gadget industry (and smartwatch industry by inclusion) needs badly is a completely new battery tech to make a significant step ahead.

Screen

Speaking of quality, the screen of the Moto 360 is certainly not bad, but it's nowhere near amazing either. At closer look, you can easily see the individual pixels, although it has never really been a big issue for me. That being said, it is not resolution what stifles smartwatches. It is the limitation of the display technology. For the Moto 360 screen, Motorola did not use AMOLED, which would result in superior contrast and better blacks (although worse sunlight visibility). E-ink technology, on the other hand, although sounds like a perfect thing for smartwatches, has limitations of its own, with lack of color being just one.

Pixels in Moto 360 display, photo courtesy of androidcentral.com

I was personally a bit misled by what Motorola promised in all these Moto 360 ads and preview videos I found on YouTube. To me, what the producer (and several reviewers) advertised as ambient screen mode sounded like a promise. A glimpse of hope that buying Moto 360 I would actually enjoy a smartwatch which acts more like a regular watch, i.e. displays the time regardless of whether I'm looking at it or not. After all, this was the first thing I might expect from a watch.

To my surprise, even with ambient screen mode on, the Moto 360 would ultimately still go to sleep, only having displayed the face for a more extended period of time, i.e. 2-5 minutes. After that you still have to wave your hand or tilt the watch to wake it up.

This is disappointing to say the least, and thus reveals smartwatches true bloodline. After all it's just a wrist-mounted smartphone, and still requires your interaction to wake the screen. Not that I really care, I do not have to peek at my watch every 5 minutes without moving my hands. The problem is that the face and hands are not there just to show you the time, they constitute integral elements of watch design and make its looks. The fact that instead of a beautiful watch face of my choice there is a pitch black hole on my wrist actually is an issue and spoils the otherwise good impression of the Moto 360 being an actual watch (and not a being a peek or a glimpse).

Faint hands or a sleeping, pitch black face is what Moto 360 displays 80% of the time.

On top of that, it seems that Motorola and the search giant Google intentionally made the Moto 360 screen look way better in promotional screens and videos than what you can actually expect from the real product. Just compare the photos below. Not only do the images promise amazing sunlight visibility, they also suggest substantially higher screen resolution, which is an utterly misleading lie. The man sipping whiskey in another official photo seems to enjoy the watch face without having to tilt it towards his face at all.

Motorola teases with amazing visibility in direct sunlight, but only on paper.

Sharp, clear display in promotional materials.

Pixels? What pixels?

Design

Wearables in 2014 still felt quite like square bricks attached to people's wrists, much due to certain difficulties tech companies had creating a good display that is not a rectangle. In terms of design, this inherent flaw positioned them more confidently among Casio digital watches than Atlantic or TAG. Only Motorola made an actual effort to create something remotely elegant and universal: a circular timepiece, and that's a good thing. With strong backing from Google, they went for the timeless, gestalt watch shape, hoping to appeal to the masses and thus make the transition from your old Timex to a smartwatch a bit less painful one.

Although Moto 360 is a truly beatiful smartwatch when compared to other smartwatches around, it certainly loses with all these Omegas, Armanis and Tissots. Motorola's watch is still on the thick side, and is bit bulky overall. It is light, but I never considered it an advantage per se. I cant't wait to see what next generations of smartwatches can bring. At the moment the only circular competitor for the Moto 360 is LG's G Watch R, but it's miles behind in terms of elegance.

It is quite a challenge to make a functional, beautiful smartwatch. Motorola obviously manipulated their promotional visuals (see photo below), and it's quite surprising that most people failed to notice. What adorns the nice cylinder-shaped product box is a nice watch, but certainly not the one you can find inside it. The bezels of the watch in the rendered image are considerably thinner, while the watch itself seems sleeker and more elegant. Ironically though, the Moto 360 render looks much like recently announced Withings Ativite, a stunning smart-analogue activity hybrid watch coming out next year.

Render image next to actual Moto 360. See the bezel thickness difference.

Withings Activite, a smartwatch hybrid coming out next year.

Price

As for now, the $100-$300 that you have to pay for a smartwatch is the kind of dough that could actually get you a very nice analogue watch (not a smartwatch). I mean, if you don't care about Android Wear so much, and don't mind reading your text messages from the phone, smartwatch won't change your life.

Bottom line

I toyed with my Moto 360 for about a week until I realized how imprefect product it was, and finally sold it. There was no reason for me to keep it. Much still remains to be improved in smartwatches and Android Wear. We have yet to see what Apple brings to the table next year, but the design of their watch is certainly not my cup of tea.

If you made it this far reading this post, you might still be on the fence about buing one, but watch-smartwatch transition will not change your life as much as the book-ebook transition potentially did, believe you me.

There is no doubt smartwatches will soon overcome the problems I mentioned above like screen resolution, direct sunlight visibility, screen on time, thickness, battery life or even price. By that time, I'm going to sit and watch.