The Inconvenient Truth about Android Wear (Moto 360): A review after nearly a year of use
TL;DR - Should I buy the Moto 360 or any an Android Wear device? No, wait until probably mid 2016 for the vision to meet reality.
After having used my 360 since nov 2014, and having a new crop on the horizon feel it might be a good time to now write down my thoughts on the device. The general answer is no, you should not buy any current Android Wear device. My reasons follow.
Reason 1: The 360 and Android Wear are too slow. Whenever one of my friends asks about my watch I really can't show them anything ad hoc as even the simplest task - changing a watch face can take a while and be unpredictably sluggish.
Reason 2: The way you access apps is way too inconvenient. There are some apps that try and repair this but since Google hasn't made the home screen extensible, even accessing the apps that repair the inconvenience is inconvenient.
Reason 3: Even as a timepiece it's not great as you have to wait a moment for the display to light up even with ambient mode on.
Reason 4: If you cross your arms it activates, which is the wrist equivalent of the pocket dial. Not as annoying but more common.
Reason 5: The same interaction modes that work for smartphones don't for such a small display that is obscured by your finger as you use it. I suggest as least having the bezel as potentiometer that apps can access.
Reason 6: The voice recognition is just terrible... and slow, very slow. Added to this is that the times when you're more likely to use it, say driving or when you can't access your phone are times when your internet connection latency is higher and bandwidth is likely lower (eg on mobile internet, possibly on the edge of coverage). Now what if the VR gets the message 90% right? Is there an easy way to modify the text slightly? Nope.
Reason 7: The design is not robust. The watch suffers from the back-cracking (mine is starting to on both sides) and LCD burn-in even though I wear it most days so it's not like it's sitting on the charger all the time.
Reason 8: The Moto 360 probably has the worst battery life of the original Android Wear crop at maybe 12 hours with almost no use. Battery life needs to be at least a long weekend because likely you forgot your charger. An interesting note is that over the firmware updates, the battery life changes dramatically. I used to get almost 16hours. This varies quite a lot with users so YMMV.
Because of all this, I seldom use the watch for anything other than the time and even then, it's slow response to my wrist flick constantly reminds me of why I seldom use it.
The things I really like about the 360 are the look and size. A lot of watches released were quite large and objectivity ugly. Of the ones that were somewhat fashionable my opinion is that the 360 was leagues ahead. Some may prefer others but that's my opinion.
Overall Verdict: Wait for 3rd gen (not the 2nd gen coming in sept) features:
* Faster hardware - Current watch CPUs/display drivers are just a bit too slow
* Better battery life - A combination of bigger battery, better hardware and better software should take this to 3 days.
* Onboard GPS mandatory - So you can run with just it and some bt headphones
* Visible in the sun OLED - This is required as LED uses too much power to be an effective watch and several OLED watches are not legible in the sun.
* Better Android Wear - Android wear just isn't up to par - Google needs to allow extending the home screen and overall faster OS responsiveness.
After having used my 360 since nov 2014, and having a new crop on the horizon feel it might be a good time to now write down my thoughts on the device. The general answer is no, you should not buy any current Android Wear device. My reasons follow.
Reason 1: The 360 and Android Wear are too slow. Whenever one of my friends asks about my watch I really can't show them anything ad hoc as even the simplest task - changing a watch face can take a while and be unpredictably sluggish.
Reason 2: The way you access apps is way too inconvenient. There are some apps that try and repair this but since Google hasn't made the home screen extensible, even accessing the apps that repair the inconvenience is inconvenient.
Reason 3: Even as a timepiece it's not great as you have to wait a moment for the display to light up even with ambient mode on.
Reason 4: If you cross your arms it activates, which is the wrist equivalent of the pocket dial. Not as annoying but more common.
Reason 5: The same interaction modes that work for smartphones don't for such a small display that is obscured by your finger as you use it. I suggest as least having the bezel as potentiometer that apps can access.
Reason 6: The voice recognition is just terrible... and slow, very slow. Added to this is that the times when you're more likely to use it, say driving or when you can't access your phone are times when your internet connection latency is higher and bandwidth is likely lower (eg on mobile internet, possibly on the edge of coverage). Now what if the VR gets the message 90% right? Is there an easy way to modify the text slightly? Nope.
Reason 7: The design is not robust. The watch suffers from the back-cracking (mine is starting to on both sides) and LCD burn-in even though I wear it most days so it's not like it's sitting on the charger all the time.
Reason 8: The Moto 360 probably has the worst battery life of the original Android Wear crop at maybe 12 hours with almost no use. Battery life needs to be at least a long weekend because likely you forgot your charger. An interesting note is that over the firmware updates, the battery life changes dramatically. I used to get almost 16hours. This varies quite a lot with users so YMMV.
Because of all this, I seldom use the watch for anything other than the time and even then, it's slow response to my wrist flick constantly reminds me of why I seldom use it.
The things I really like about the 360 are the look and size. A lot of watches released were quite large and objectivity ugly. Of the ones that were somewhat fashionable my opinion is that the 360 was leagues ahead. Some may prefer others but that's my opinion.
Overall Verdict: Wait for 3rd gen (not the 2nd gen coming in sept) features:
* Faster hardware - Current watch CPUs/display drivers are just a bit too slow
* Better battery life - A combination of bigger battery, better hardware and better software should take this to 3 days.
* Onboard GPS mandatory - So you can run with just it and some bt headphones
* Visible in the sun OLED - This is required as LED uses too much power to be an effective watch and several OLED watches are not legible in the sun.
* Better Android Wear - Android wear just isn't up to par - Google needs to allow extending the home screen and overall faster OS responsiveness.
Comments
Post a Comment