Shame about the battery life, though. Please fix that Motorola, I want to give you my money so bad, but cannot do it until you fix the battery life.
1. Battery life. The initial reviews complaining about battery life are simply inaccurate. I have ambient mode on (always-on screen) which is supposed to kill battery, and am easily getting a day out of this watch (ending 16 hour days with 20-30% remaining). I'm using the watch all the time to read emails, respond to messages, etc. If you don't believe me, check /r/moto360, you'll find a bunch of people who actually have the watch corroborating that the battery life is perfectly fine.
2. Size. I have tiny wrists and it looks great on my arm. Not too thick or too big at all, and very much on par with typical men's watches. The fact that it's very light helps too.
It's a fantastic device and I'm really enjoying it.
If the battery life is indeed a lot better than the vast majority of reviews are stating then Motorola really needs to get ahead of this message, because it would be foolish for them to expect most people to spend $250 just to try the device out when there is such a clear consensus of a major problem in the published reviews.
The size was never an issue for me because that's an easily measurable spec and I'm okay with the size as specced, but buying the device when almost all the reviews are telling me the watch will be dead in 12 hours represents a pretty big leap of faith, so if it really isn't an issue (other than PR), I do hope Motorola finds a way to get past it.
I'm thinking Minimum Viable Phone (or communications device) that I can wear on my wrist when doing thing, and have some casual interactions with text messaging, and glancing at emails)...
I fear that you might be representing too small a fragment of the market to get your desired product.
http://www.samsungmobilepress.com/2014/08/28/Samsung-Gear-S-...
Edit: replaced link
The problem's these require extensive radio interaction/SoC, without a phone support (which can stream the information via bluetooth LE) you have to carry that in the watch itself.
http://fr.aliexpress.com/item/Intelligent-Bluetooth-watch-mo...
Considering that they can't even get the battery life up without that requirement, it might be a while unless we make significant scientific breakthroughs in battery or wireless technology.
"Both the Samsung Gear S and the Gear Circle will be available in global markets in phases through Samsung’s retail channels, e-commerce websites and via carriers beginning October."
The band connection to the very bottom is really too bad, it makes the watch look extremely thick.
The Swiss are going to sleep well tonight.
I really wanted to like this?
I think I'm about a year from being able to join the bandwagon.
The force sensitive display might be useful, I couldn't really tell from the coverage. At least one person there commented that they were having a hard time seeing the big difference between "force press" and "long press".
Is the "Taptic" feedback significantly different that the vibrating motor present on every other watch? I can't really tell, but I think functionally, vibration can already serve the purpose well enough, although the Apple implementation might be a bit more elegant -- I can't find enough information to say for sure.
I would say the Apple innovations here is mainly the digital crown. On every smartwatch, there's a lot of swiping around to do basic navigation, but there's not been a really good way to zoom in and out. Apple's implementation allows for apps like their photo demo to be more practical. I'm suspicious that they might be overusing it -- the idea of needing to zoom around to launch apps seems less like a good idea, but overall the novel input method is an innovation I'd say.
I assume they must have NFC in the watch to handle the payments system. That's (I think) novel among the smartwatch lineup, and maybe that's a thing that really catches on.
Mostly though, I think that the people who complained that Android Wear was just a mini cell phone on your wrist should be disappointed with the Apple Watch as well. I'm not one of them for the record, I'm wearing the Gear Live right now, and I quite like it. But I don't think Apple has revolutionized the smart watch. They've just made what looks to be a solid entry into the market.
Haha, yes I thought the same thing too - communicating heart rates, hand drawn fish for sushi, 3 dots for asking lunch - that was _very_ un-Apple-y.
I think the logical conclusion to draw here is that there was an elaborate "Trading Spaces" style bet in the Apple executive ranks on who could get Tim Cook onstage doing the most ridiculous product demo. Kudos to whoever won that one.
I don't know that it felt Samsung. When I heard about the feature I immediately thought of how I might use it with my wife and family. It basically takes the trivial communication you have with people close to you throughout the day and makes it more physical and less complex. I don't think I've gotten that feeling from Samsung features — that said, I don't really have any desire to wear this (or any) watch at all.
> The force sensitive display might be useful, I couldn't really tell from the coverage. At least one person there commented that they were having a hard time seeing the big difference between "force press" and "long press".
Yeah, I'd like to know more about this. It felt like one of the more clever features if it is actually distinct from long press. That is, if it can feel easily distinguishable from a press or swipe while still feeling intuitive, I think they will really have something.
> Is the "Taptic" feedback significantly different that the vibrating motor present on every other watch? I can't really tell, but I think functionally, vibration can already serve the purpose well enough, although the Apple implementation might be a bit more elegant -- I can't find enough information to say for sure.
Well according to the keynote the "Taptic" feedback unit can actually mark out directions on your wrist. That is, telling you to turn left or right when you come to an intersection purely through touch. So unless it's something stupid like "two vibrates for left, one for right" it might actually be something interesting.
> the idea of needing to zoom around to launch apps seems less like a good idea, but overall the novel input method is an innovation I'd say.
It sounds like you can do either. They mention tapping to zoom in on an "app neighbourhood" and tapping once again to launch an app. I also think the digital crown is quite clever — and it will be a very Apple-thing to pull off if they can make it feel truly one-to-one with the UI animations.
> I assume they must have NFC in the watch to handle the payments system.
I've read that the NFC payments through the watch will be tied to skin contact. So they will only work while the device is touching your skin. If you lose skin contact you'll have to re-enter your pin code next time you wear the watch to enable payments. Seems like a well thought out use case.
> Mostly though, I think that the people who complained that Android Wear was just a mini cell phone on your wrist should be disappointed with the Apple Watch as well. I'm not one of them for the record, I'm wearing the Gear Live right now, and I quite like it. But I don't think Apple has revolutionized the smart watch. They've just made what looks to be a solid entry into the market.
I agree. Though I'm a little disappointed that the Apple Watch attempts to be so many things.
http://nothingjustworks.com/android-may-have-just-won-the-sm...
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review
OTOH, gizmodo says the battery life isn't quite that bad:
http://gizmodo.com/moto-360-battery-life-test-so-far-not-as-...
... but every other review I've read (about 6 including these) has really hammered it on the battery being dead well before the day is over.
I'm sure there is some YMMV depending upon usage and a moto 360 might last me a full day personally (since I'm not a reviewer and wouldn't be doing... reviewer things with it all day), but I'm not willing to slap down $250 to find out when even the positive reviews say it has the weakest battery life of all the current crop of watches. I can wait until revision 2 hits to be sure that I only have to take the thing off once per day.