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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

That stem is interesting. The Pebble has 4 buttons, which are generally mapped to up, down, select, and back. That strikes me as the minimum for useful app interface.

With the Moto 360's stem I can see getting up down and select, but now how they'd do back. Maybe a long-press?

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It has voice and touch screen. Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQ3y902DEQ#t=60

Remember that this is likely to have touch and voice input too, unlike the Pebble.

That one knob could be a really short joy-stick type device. Giving you 5 different inputs: up, down, left, right and push. Or even 7 if you can also turn it each direction. (we have a 7-input knob for the navi in our car.) So depending on how you mapped those movements, you can achieve all the actions you want.

Not really input related, but is it remotely plausible that winding could charge the battery?

Absolutely not.

  1. The dynamo would take up too much room
  2. Pinching a tiny metal shaft is ergonomically awful
  3. have you seen the tiny wind-up flashlights?  they're huge, and they require quite a lot of winding, and that's just to power an LED for a few minutes.
  4. groundbreaking features like a wind-up piece of personal electronics, are *flagship* features.  If this thing had a 1 week battery, or was windup, or whatever, that would be a *very high visibility* part of the ad campaign.

Swipe from left to right?

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