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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

I'm very impressed. When I saw the Google video, I thought the round watch was a photoshopped concept we may see in the future, but it's actually shipping in a few months.

Also, is this the first mass-market device with a round screen? I'd be interested to see how the layouts work from a developer perspective. Whether relative or fixed, desktop, mobile or web, we're all so used to rectangular, grid based layouts.

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It's still "simulated" which means Photoshopped / After Effects. I"m actually pretty nervous because there's no "simulated" disclaimer, yet these mock-ups are terribly rough:

- fake / inconsistent lighting accents & bevel

- screens in the photos are pixelated (looks like a screen-res quality source was rotated), yet the 3D model's screen is totally smooth suggesting 400 dpi or better

- clip rotation angles are off

- the cropping is poor, has antialiasing problems

In other words, you can tell by some of the pixels?

Well, i imagine radley has seen quite a few shops in his time.

A+, didn't think I'd see this reference on HN :)

An easy way to tell: look at the edges of the text area's white background. See how they're kinda jaggy, almost like steps? That's due to low resolution. Either the device is low res (which most smart phones are) or the source image was.

Now look at the edges of the 3D watch's hands: they're all smooth at every angle. That means either a 3D mock-up or an incredibly high res screen. Yet look at the black watch face in the prior shot: all the hands are jagged.

Nice; though reading your explanation made me imagine how we're getting close to https://xkcd.com/331/ territory ;).

and by ...

I thought this disclaimer was needed only for TV ads.

IMO if you're a responsible marketer, this is needed everywhere.

Did you watch the video? Looks like they have real prototypes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQ3y902DEQ&noredirect=1#t=6...

He means that it may be a real device prototype, but the video is added in post.

It's no doubt a real watch he's wearing, but I'm pretty sure the screen is fake. No screen that emits photons would appear like that when recorded by a camcorder. The brightness and crispness is visibly wrong. I'm pretty sure it's CG.

The screen is definitely an overlay. There's even a tiny tracking glitch at 1:09-1:10.

>I'm pretty sure the screen is fake

It says that the screen is simulated at 0:23.

"Screen Images Simulated" fine print @ 0:25 (under the scrubber)

I've never seen Android that smooth and I'm an Android UI expert. That's all After Effects.

As an Android UI expert, can you provide mockups to redesign the Android Wear UI?

No thnx, but I will do a test build soon to see what the emulator's actual rez is...

Have you worked with the Nexus 5?

Round is 320x320 and square is 280x280 according to this article:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/android-wear-facts,news-18491.ht...

I totally missed that. Thanks.

The LG watch looks more like an iPhone strapped to your wrist than a watch.

http://i.imgur.com/yP1Qpa9.png

I was kind of excited after viewing the Motorola page, but after the videos, I'm disappointed. I don't want to speak to my watch, and I don't care about having yet another app for weather, calendar, etc. The videos just reminded me that I don't care about any of this information, or having it available on my wrist. I'll stick to a traditional watch, I think they're more stylish, and the time is really the only piece of information I need immediate access to on a constant basis. Everything else can be in pocket.

> I don't want to speak to my watch

Doesn't everyone want to look like a TV show FBI agent?

Contemporary TV show protagonists have had bluetooth earpieces for years now and (nearly) no-one wants to look like that either.

The only person I recall talking to their watch (and I'm probably showing my age here) is David Hasselhoff as The Knight Rider[1]

[1] http://666kb.com/i/cmtolc7lx36yntfbq.jpg

We'll see what the real one ends up like. iPhone screens (and the recent Galaxy S screens) look great in 'simulated' images, and look pretty amazing in real life.

On the other hand, I've seen a Galaxy Gear in person and the screen was not impressive. But I bet the 'simulated images' look pretty good.

it's not photoshop at all, device emulator exists and it works good.

> Also, is this the first mass-market device with a round screen?

Motorola has made a phone with a round screen before http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_aura-2562.php

I mostly remember the v70 http://www.mobilegazette.com/motorola-v70.htm (2002) and was waiting for Motorola to pitch in the watch game.

I used to have a v70. It was one of my favourite phones I've owned.

I only had one Motorola phone, a v36 (Europe name), it was a very special phone, extremely elegant http://imgur.com/ , not fully featured but everything it did, it did quick and well. I always had a small thing for Motorola hardware since.

I'm not familiar with the v35, but that would have been a different phone from the v70 and not just a European name since I live in Europe and my v70 was still called a v70.

I was 100% sure that Apple's iWatch would be round. This looks almost exactly like I imagined the iWatch would look, and weirdly it feels like they copied it. (Well, it looks like a normal watch, and that's what I expected from Apple, not from Google/Moto).

Wait what? You're accusing Motorola of copying your imagination of what an unreleased Apple product might look like?

Its serious third order ip theft!

Yes, that's obviously what I said.

I hope you realize how absurd you sound.

Did Geee really need a /s for a comment that would imply Google/Moto had mind-reading powers? I guess so.

I hope you realize he was being sarcastic.

It doesn't sound even remotely sarcastic.

He doesn't even sound..

I'm referring to the statement itself, not the person.

I can hear a sound, the woosh sound as it goes over your head.

Plenty of mass-market devices with round screen. Heres a 3+ year old Garmin watch with touch and pixel-based round screen:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/images/2011/04/IMG_0486A-720x479....

Based on the size of the bezel couldn't that still be a rectangular lcd?

I tried finding pictures of the internals of that watch, but my google-fu is not strong enough.

yeah it looks like a rectangular screen

I have one (well, two at one point). The LCD is rectangular in a round bezel.

Here is a picture of a teardown of a similar watch: http://gadgetnerdly.com/the-garmin-fenix-gets-the-fcc-teardo... , confirms square screen.

A round screen both worries and excites me. I can't think of a nice way to present a website on a circular screen but it would also bother me to waste all that space putting everything into a box.

Do you really think browsing the web will be an important use-case for a watch?

No, but I also didn't think people were going to be crazy about browsing the web on a small touch screen. It's fun to think about at the very least.

I would assume app development/etc would be done in 'block' like GUI and the watch will convert it into a round version on the fly.

This is exactly what's wrong with the idea of smartwatches today. People want to do things like put websites on them.

Why, why on earth do I need the web on my watch?

Why not if it can be done well? Also, I thought the same thing about my smart phone years ago.

How could you possibly put the web on a screen where my fingertip is big enough to cover up 25% of it at any moment?

This seems like one of those cases where less is definitely more.

you seem to think that in 3 years there won't be 5" watches...

Yes. Yes I do.

If flying cars existed, I'd drive one. If pigs flied I'd never leave home without an umbrella.

If it could be done, maybe. But I do not think it can be done well. A watch's screen is maybe 2". It's designed to be glanced at and not stared at for extended periods of time.

I don't want a watch that has the Web. It fundamentally doesn't do what I want a watch to do.

I guess a watch in which you can browser is not a watch anymore.

Really? Viewing websites was one of the most demanded features from a smart phone. To the point where feature phones and executive phones had in built web browsers before iPhones and their ilk came to market. It's also why WAP (for all it's sins) was created in the 90s and available on dumb phones.

CSS will need a @media (device-shape: circle, radius: 300px) { … } ☺

Personally I think it would be awesome to have a radial based layout system. But recognize that probably won't happen. Probably do a square layout with a circular clipping mask. Still rect(3, -45, 3, -45, 3, 130, 3, 130) assuming a [radius,angle] co-ordinate system would be fun to play with.

Radial menus are the best. I wish everyone used them (for all platforms). My biggest advantage is they (when implemented properly) allow and promote muscle memory, less mousemovement required. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu

You could certainly implement that on top of the cartesian system.

> Also, is this the first mass-market device with a round screen?

Haha, that takes "responsive" to a whole new level.

Round LCD display can already be bought online (for example: http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/round-lcd-display.html) Some suppliers can provide 5000 items per day.

I think they are used in cars as dials and gauges.

The round screen in the Google video is obviously a mock-up, but it's only a slight tweak away from existing screens. Notice that the screen isn't a full circle but is flattened at the bottom - unlike with a fully round screen this means they could use a standard FFC to connect the screen.

Of course it's photoshopped, they essentially have to in order to do the scrolling effect.

Nest has a round screen, and it came out over 2 years ago.

The Nest display has a square body, but they only have actual pixels in a circular area[1]. Definitely innovative, but the Moto360 will need to be circular in both body and pixel area.

[1] http://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/xMQM5UAtkAbVdFZL.me...

(http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nest+Learning+Thermostat+2nd+..., step 12)

Nest has a round screen. Not on your wrist, but none the less.

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