Moto 360 review – Beautiful outside, ugly inside
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
They then almost completely ignore the results of their own tests but tack on a point about "well floating point sucks, so that explains our criticisms." Except it doesn't. A much more likely candidate (which they themselves hint at) is using poorly performing storage or having software glitches.
So I cannot tell if the author didn't understand the results or just wanted to moan that the 360 had an old CPU and didn't really care what the data actually said (they also provide no source for the power consumption claims).
I won't be buying a 360 simply because it has terrible battery life and costs $250. But this article is a little off. The second page just isn't consistent with itself.
This line is especially suspect -- all else controlled, power usage should go up with line width, not down.
Probably, the reason they chose to go with the OMAP 3 is power usage -- it's so old but well-supported that its drivers have been really optimized and it's quite efficient under Linux.
Power dissipation in a CMOS gate is made up of two primary components: static leakage and dynamic losses. Dynamic losses are related to the "dissipation" capacitance (Cdiss or Cpd in CMOS datasheets) and the switching frequency. If you want to understand why, consider charging an RC circuit. How much energy is lost to the resistor and how much is stored in the capacitor at the end of charging? How does the selection of the resistor and capacitor value impact this ratio?
So for minimum dynamic loss you want to minimize Cdiss which involves making gates as small as possible. However, this makes the static leakage higher. So it may not be universally as simple as "a smaller process is lower power". For a system which spends most of it's time in sleep, or clocks slowly it may actually be better to eat the dynamic loss of a larger process in order to get the lower leakage, which is something I believe TI did with some of the FRAM '430 parts (but I can't find the link now).
PS: it's not only in ars' synthetic test but also real life reviews said the battery life is too low.
A watch needs an order of magnitude less CPU power than a phone, perhaps several. In 2014 if you see a watch product with a smartphone CPU, you know they blew it.
They share only the form factor. I would go as far as saying they do not even share the functionality of keeping track of time: nowadays traditional watches are basically used only as fashion accessories (as the article points out), since for most people that function has been carried out by mobile phones since the first Nokias.
A Smartwatch is more like a lightweight (in every sense) smartphone, with the significant drawback of having much less space available for a battery, but I agree completely that having to charge it twice a day is a deal breaker, and not acceptable from a user standpoint, regardless of the feat of engineering the watch actually is.
The Pebble, to it's credit, has a Cortex-M microcontroller instead of a smartphone SoC and get's up to a week of battery life.
Cortex A9 was both a more efficient and more powerful chip. Now, what most OEMs use in low-end phones, and even smartwatches is Cortex A7 which is roughly as powerful as Cortex A8, but far more efficient, both because of its design but also because it comes at 28nm.
I think this comparison was made by ARM itself:
http://archive.linuxgizmos.com/ldimages/stories/arm_cortexa7...
It's really strange that Motorola would go for the 3 year old Cortex A8 core, when Cortex A7 has been available for more than a year, and several chip makers produce them in different varieties.
Why not useful metrics like screen lag, or the time it takes to switch between tasks?
I've tested all of them (literally), on 3 very different phones (GS5, LG3, Moto X) , and never experienced this.
Without any more data on the test environment, one might think they would stop to check whether the problem is on their side if it happens all the time on every device.
It's like saying "Every table we tried had objects roll off them. Therefore, they are bad tables" (or you know, the floor you put them on wasn't level)
* The version of the OS running on the phone can impact BT stability
* What other BT devices you are paired to can impact BT stability
* The RF environment you are in can impact BT stability
Reliably replicating Bluetooth bugs is... interesting.
Is there any hope that these new wearable computers will lead to the adoption of something better than Bluetooth? Something based on IEEE 802.15.4, maybe?
BTLE implementations on the other hand, those are horrible.
It isn't all that hard to outright crash an iPhone when using BTLE.
Other platforms are... interesting.
Part of the problem is that the overall big BT spec is rather all encompassing, getting test coverage on it is hard.
They have almost all their users on the latest OS, they control the stack end to end and everyone is quite fine if features are only supported on certain models.
They have almost all their users on the latest OS, they control the stack end to end and everyone is quite fine if features are only supported on certain models.
Moto 360 is supported on all Android devices with BT 4.0 support which is a lot of different hardware and software combinations.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/ORce7P9...
For another thing, Motorola sold another smartwatch in 2011 using what appears to be the exact same CPU. Which means one group inside the company would have to have built a watch in less than a year, while another group working on a watch in the same company took at least four times as long.
It's much more likely that they just had a big pile of CPUs left lying around a warehouse that they never used because the Motoactv was a commercial flop.
I do find the whole battery issue somewhat concerning and watch wise I'd be expecting a weeks usage and until then and for many this is another device to add to the charging schedule if acquired.
There's no way I'm ever buying a smartwatch that doesn't easily get 1 full day worth of life without a recharge. I wouldn't put up with that on a smartphone, and a smartphone is MUCH easier to randomly recharge during the day than something strapped to your wrist is.
OTOH, there's no way I'm buying a clunky dorky smartwatch either and the Moto 360 is by far the best looking of the bunch, so I guess I'm waiting until next year's batch until Moto fixes the battery problem or some other company fixes their industrial design problems.
EDIT: apparently the G Watch and Gear Live have a Snapdragon 400 with 3 core deactivated. So I guess they could do the same with a 410.
Ars Technica reviews are usually good but they couldn't have found a watch that's not 10X the Moto's price to compare aesthetics to?
*Edit: Corrected site name.
As for the comparison, I'm sure that was a bit tongue and cheek. No one buys a > $1k watch for functionality. Anyways, if you ever get a chance to attend Basel World, I highly recommend it.
Technologists understand the comparative value of functionality; they generally do not understand the value of fashion.
For example, I see so many techies thinking people are "stupid" to keep buying "shiny Apple stuff". That only shows a shallow understanding of "software is eating the world". People spend WAY more money on apparel than they do tech. The next wave of tech growth is much less about smart refrigerators, and much more about smart socks & belts.
Just like everyone wears shoes, EVERYONE is going to have a smartphone, soon. This is a profoundly new thing.
http://media.messe.ch/epaper/BASELWORLD/2014/Baselworld_Bran...
Haha, this is a good joke. Why do you need to have so much CPU power for a smatchwatch anyway, that won't be driving tons of pixels every microsecond ? What's really the issue there? We still use MUCH older processors in calculators as well, for very specific reasons too and for battery life.
> In the CPU benchmark, the OMAP 3 shows very poor floating point performance, a bottleneck which could explain the stuttering and freezing we experience.
> The battery life of the Moto 360 is just awful, and that's reflected in our test. Over two runs, the watch averaged only 3 hours and 39 minutes, less than half of what the LG G Watch managed when we reviewed it a few months ago […] Given the SoC, the battery performance isn't surprising. The 360 is saddled with an old, inefficient processor with big, power-hungry transistors.
One of the A7's goals was to provide equivalent performances to the A8 with much better efficiency: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4991/Screen%20Shot%202011-1...
Better is a bare headsup device - a "display" as big as you like, without being bigger. Google Glass sans camera (so no privacy concerns til we're ready for it). It can even have the time in the corner...
EDIT yes opps, s/phone/watch/. Ironically cut/paste was failing on my smartphone, as was I.
Not only is this not correct, it's not even a prediction of future events any more. Maybe you meant "smart watches will fail". I might buy that.
I guess you mean "smartwatch". Phones have been pretty successful so far ;)
Anyway, I think I do not agree with you, since I got the early ugly firstrun Android wear device from I/O, the LG Watch.
My experience is that the watch is by no means the next step in the evolution of personal computers or anything. But it is a very useful accessory for the computer you already have in your pocket.
Once you have it on your wrist you notice that
- phone ringtones are awkward and annoying to anyone around you.
- opening and unlocking your phone 125 times per day (This numbers is from Google) just to check for information and if there is something you need to act on right now is incredible annoying.
- voice commands, as limited as this is right now, is only useful if you can trigger it immediately when you need it. The few voice commands I find useful (set alarm, remind me to...) are much much more convenient if I can just say them.
So my point is that the watch is much more useful than a case, and only slightly less useful than headphones. If they start being equipped with more sensors and the cost falls below $80, they will become even more interesting.
Lots of people like wearing a watch. It combines a small bit of practical benefit with the appeal of jewelry/fashion, and it doesn't have the downsides of glasses like pinched noses and ears or the mild social drawbacks (loads of people, my girlfriend for one, hate the way they look in their glasses).
People do wear sunglasses for fashion, but most people would find it uncomfortable and awkward to wear them all the time, indoors and out. Maybe that changes in the future, but right now, I'd bet loads of money on watches over glasses if the contest is between the two.
Ulimately, yes, smartcontacts or implants, but a long way off. I like eyetracking: only render the bit you're looking at (lower res peripherally). Need super low latency though.
Regardless I think smart glasses are much more useful than a smart watch mainly because of how it can overlay things into your field of vision. Word Lens is a really cool example of this feature(realtime ocr/translation/overlay in your language of choosing).
So I haven't used a watch for about 20 years.
I don't look at my phone anywhere near as often as 120 times per day. I have headphones with play/skip buttons, so that covers about 97% of my interaction with my phone during the day.
I get the same benefits noted above from my smartwatch, first the Pebble and now the LG. They have become a priceless part of my daily routine.
What happened however surprised me. I found the simple change of having notifications pop up on my wrist was saving me from pulling the phone out of its holder over and over during a day every time it chimed with an email or message. I get a ton of communication during the day but 70% of it doesn't require a response from me immediately... the remaining 30% however does. I was now able to filter incoming messages with barely an interruption to what I was doing at the time.
From there I expanded Apps to bringing up my calendar overview, putting navigation directions on my wrist, using silent alarms (wrist vibration) to alert me during meetings, etc. It allows me to be more connected to my phone, without being more connected to my phone, if you know what I mean.
Now I have since moved to an LG watch and I do like it. No more week long battery life but it will go over a day easily. Lots more gimmicky applications like remote camera control, etc. but also useful things, like ticking items off my Keep grocery list as I wander the store... without holding my phone.
Is it perfect for everyone? Nothing is. :) But I will stand corrected for my early mocking of the form factor. I "don't leave home without it" now.
Is there a source for this at all beyond personal experience? I wouldn't expect that to be the case in general - I definitely wouldn't see the smartphone as the successor product to the watch.
I can't even find a correlation that suggests a permanent replacement of watches with phones. MarketWatch [0] have a graph showing a decrease in watch sales from 2007-2009 but that had recovered fully by 2012.
While smartwatches might fail I don't think these manufacturers will have a valid claim that they failed because they'd already ruined the watch market.
[0] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-watchs-time-isnt-up-201...
This article from Timex claims the USA total sales market for watches, more or less pre-cellphone, was 1.2 billion, because timex had $400M revenue and 1/3 of the USA market.
http://www.answers.com/topic/timex-corporation
This article claims the 2013 sales for Rolex were $4.5B and they had ten percent of the world market for mfgrs, and the USA is ten percent of the world market for sales, so a comparable USA total sales market is perhaps "four billion" to one sig fig or less.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/wrist-watch-industry-statistic...
So the sales in the USA have monetarily in nominal dollars roughly tripled. This is probably flat when corrected for inflation. On one hand minimum wage has gone from $3.80 to $7.25 which is barely doubling, then again the standard of living has inploded since then because virtually all expenses have increased at a far faster rate. Still to less than one sig fig I'd say the market is vaguely flat when adjusted for inflation.
Then again I read this comment and went to the deli to pick up a breakfast and my banana, strawberry, and tea observations of people in line ahead and behind me, and the employees, and customers at tables, were 17 people, one rather gaudy gold mechanical watch, one cheap digital watch, three bracelets (one looking like a medical alert bracelet). Two women furiously texting away (perhaps to each other). One woman listening to music on her iphone with the iconic white earbuds. One guy talking on unidentified smartphone.
My guess, looking at sales figures, is the market has dried up for anyone not willing to spend $2000+ on a watch, has exploded as conspicuous consumption for $2K+. The Chinese only made 600M disposable watches for the 7.1 billion of the world population who aren't 1%ers, and I suppose thats believable, if 99%er watches are value engineered to only last a year or two for $10 at walmart, I'd estimate I'd only see a couple in my trip to the deli, and thats what I saw.
If they could sell to 10% of the smartphone population, which admittedly sounds optimistic for a wristwatch with a 3 hour battery life, then their theoretical sales could be severely market disrupting. I'm not seeing it happen.
To some extent wristwatches are another cultural trap. Only about 1 in 40 people watch "Survivor" despite it being freely aired, yet its supposedly our defining influential cultural entertainment. So wristwatches could very well "define our culture", at least as we currently define culture, even if only low single digits of the population purchase them. A play on words due to multiple definitions is "don't have to be popular, to be popular". Or rephrased almost noone needs to wear wristwatches for us to describe ourselves as "everyone" wears wristwatches.
Of course, on the beginning of the miniaturization process, wristwatches were not as good as pocket watches. But they are less clumsy, easier to access, keeps both of your hands free. Most importantly, they are worn visibly all the time, a pretty neat characteristic for a fashion item. Wouldn't it be better if that iPhone 6 you are planning to buy were kept in constant display for the eternal envy and adoration of your peers, instead of hidden in your pocket 80% of the time?
It is hard to try to predict the future. Instead, I like to talk about scenarios. And I cannot discard a scenario where a smartwatch is your primary "identification" device and smartphones, tablets and laptops are only big screens with greater computing power, to be accessed and unlocked through your smartwatch. Is that too far-fetched?
The history of wristwatches, a pretty interesting article for these times of wearable novelties. [1]http://www.qualitytyme.net/pages/rolex_articles/history_of_w...
What we're seeing now is something we see often in newish technologies - we take an existing technology and attempt to shoehorn it into another.
A smartwatch should not be an analog to a phone. It also probably shouldn't be a watch. But as happens so often, we say "put phone plus watch = product?"
There's very little here that's exploiting the advantages of a wearable on the arm. When wearables start exploiting their physical advantages, they'll stop being cool tech toys and start being useful.
Another huge problem with the self-quantification trend is there isn't much emphasis on doing stuff with that data. There's a fervor about knowing about yourself, but a large gap in utilizing that data.
Smart watches could very well fill that role. A nice first step would be to stop calling them smart watches. Wearables isn't much better.
Computers keep shrinking, from mainframes to desktops, laptops, smartphones. I'm curious about the next smaller form-factor, and argue it's not watches, but glasses. That was the claim I meant to make.
Not financially, which is a HUGE problem for smart watches.
I'm considered an unamerican weirdo crazy, at least in part, because I dropped like four hundred bucks on a smart phone and pay only $22/month just for service, instead of paying $100 on a two year contract like a real American, who can just barely afford a $100/month callphone bill but could never financially survive a single one time $400 expense.
These watch guys think they're going to sell $300 one time expense watches to a people who as a group have already proven they would rather pay loan shark interest rates rather than pony up a couple hundred bucks to buy their phone. This is a recipe for disaster.
The only way smart watches can possibly survive is by being bundled into a contract with AT&T or whoever, say an extra $50 a month for two years on their existing contract which would be a modest 150% APR loanshark-grade loan. You "know" the consumers are not going to be able to pony up $300 cash because they're already self selected as loanshark victims.
How hard is it to take out your phone, which is with you in your pocket or on your desk already anyway to see a notification?
I don't think that is the case.
I find it hard to believe an OMAP3 at 1GHz would be insufficient to power a smartwatch. Perhaps something is wrong with the software, they're using slower memory chips, or the NAND is of the slow & cheap variety.
I currently have a 1GHz MIPS-powered Android smartwatch (pre-Wear though), and it's plenty fast. Battery life is not great (1-2 days), but this is a cheap SoC, produced on 45nm, with WiFi and bluetooth running all the time.
I'm honestly quite amazed at how much technology we manage to push into such small, battery powered packages!
When you are cramming an old CPU into a tiny, cutting edge device like this, I think the criticisms might be warranted. Especially so considering the poor battery performance of the watch. It might not be entirely due to the CPU but it seems probable that the CPU is a nonnegligible contributor to the power consumption issues.
That's not the claim being made, especially given it's compared to similarly-clocked SoC.
The article makes two claims: 1. the watch stutters which may be caused by the low floating-point performances (benched very low), and 2. the SoC is power-hungry leading to miserable battery life.
The difference? The other SoC are based on Cortex A7, which was created in part to provide equivalent performances but much better efficiency than the A8: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4991/Screen%20Shot%202011-1...
Floating point instruction are rarely used in common software. They're important in rendering (which is offloaded to a GPU in this case) or scientific computing (which is irrelevant here, unless you were planning to fold genomes on your watch).
It's possible that this OMAP came without an FPU to save space and power.
Most Linux software for ARM is compiled with softfloat anyway, because it rarely matters for end users, and lots of ARM boards don't have an FPU. Some distributions have a separate armhf version, which does use hardware floating point operations.
From my perspective the softfloat-vs-hardfloat balance has tipped and I would say that "most Linux software for ARM" is now hardfloat rather than softfloat. But your view on this kind of thing depends a lot on whereabouts in the embedded world you are: if you're at the trailing edge then you'll see a lot more ARMv5 non-FPU devices.
One line in the article that gave me a chuckle was We can say that Android Wear looks much better on a round screen. The OS was clearly designed with circular displays in mind—every button is round, producing a cool circle-within-a-circle look on the 360. Contrast this with the Verge who said that Android Wear was designed and looks better on a square screen, and is forced onto a round screen.
There is no reason whatsoever to run Linux/Android/Dalvik/etc on a device that just needs to run a Bluetooth stack & LCD. Doing this using an STM32 would give you an order of magnitude (guess) improvement in power efficiency with no difference to the user.
Google's ART (Dalvik "replacement") initiative might help with power usage a little (as well as loading times). But unless there is a massive shift in the way Android works, I cannot see Google making enough changes to make Android a really great watch OS.
The problem of how to keep a mostly or completely analog watch wound throughout the day was solved a very long time ago. I wonder how feasible it would be to use something like the rotor weight from an automatic mechanical[1] or automatic quartz[2] watch as a trickle charger.
Would that just be too little added energy for the added complexity?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_watch [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_quartz
Just spinning up a BTLE chip to receive a message takes far more than that (orders of magnitude), and without some sort of BT connection to your phone, the watch ceases to be smart.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper#Wristwatches
When my low battery warning comes on at 20%, I've still 4x longer to go than a fully charged Moto360 - given a few notifications on each device.
> The test sends a Google Hangouts message to the watch every 15 seconds, and uses ADB over Bluetooth to turn the screen on every 15 seconds. It's a fairly heavy usage example, but it allows us to compare battery life across Android Wear devices with a fair amount of scientific rigor.
What is it like to use one every day? Is it useful at all? I don't get hangout requests every 15 minutes, does the battery last a day of normal usage?
I remembered why I don't ready tech press any more.