4 months with Moto 360

I waited a long time for Motorola to finally release its first round smart watch on Android Wear. I read a lot about them and at the last moment I was very upset to learn that there would not be the promised sapphire crystal, OLED display, and they would have to be charged every day. They also decided to deliver a processor 4 years ago ... It was with the same processor that Motorola released its Droid 2 in the USA in August 2010. And it used the same on the company's first smart watches (and there were such in November 2011: Motoactv ), only for of those hours, its frequency was limited to 600MHz instead of 1GHz.



And here, quite by the way, a Hindu colleague turned up who was on Google I / O (there are many of them - I live and work in Silicon Valley), but whose wife did not allow me to carry anything in her arms. And besides, the generous "good corporation" has already presented him with a smart square watch from Samsung, which safely rolled around at home. In a word, I was glad about the present and stopped doubting whether this watch is for me?

The first thing I had to face was the difficulty of pairing a watch with a new smartphone. It was also accompanied by a freeze and a long wait for the final connection (several minutes of a static screen with a progress bar). By the way, I changed my smartphone twice more and every time I again faced with freezes and a long wait. In general, the beginning was not the smoothest ...

Then upset the uselessness of the heart rate monitor - it was measured either according to its own schedule, or by selecting a menu item. Moreover, in both cases the readings are rather inaccurate. The most common is a message about the impossibility of determining the pulse when it is really needed (for example, in the hall after the bar).
I still did not understand whether a wet / dry hand affects failure, a sensor is pressed very strongly / weakly, and the like. Therefore, for sports, I had to buy a separate bluetooth heart rate monitor.

And finally, he killed the pedometer by the fact that it has nothing to do with the phone and the history of the readings can only be viewed on the watch in the squalid Moto Body.

Appearance


But still, one thing never gave me the opportunity to completely give up on this gadget - appearance. This is practically the only smart watch that I have seen so far that does not look like a geek piece of iron, but really claim to be a stylish accessory.

And over these 4 months, salespeople in stores and even nurses told me more than once: “You have a very stylish watch.” Of course, in California, people are generally quite accommodating, but when I wore other watches, I never heard anything like that. Moreover, it turned out that even in these parts the female gender does not know much what the Moto 360 and Android Wear in general are. Many were genuinely surprised when I showed weather widgets and the like. There was a feeling that some fell into the future ... At the same time, it is clear that most females are nonsense attracted by all this smartness of watches - appearance is much more important.

Really, it’s not the most pleasant thing to have something on your hand every day when you don’t like it externally. This is not a smartphone, which usually lies somewhere in a bag or pocket. This is part of that very first perception by other people. And you don’t always want to look like a geek.

By the way, you can easily achieve a geeky style - just change the dial to something like “Simple”: “


Yes, the watch is completely Russified as soon as you change the language in the phone settings.

Separately, I note a small section of the lower display criticized by many (the “flat tire”, as it is called in American reviews), which houses the light sensor and important connectors. Firstly, thanks to it, the watch has a rather narrow frame around the display, and secondly, the light sensor must also be shoved somewhere. And finally, I just don’t notice him in everyday life, although I heard about how terrible he is.

Utility


Many times I heard that Android Wear is still far from being able to do something really useful. Yes, this is not Samsung Tizen, which allows you to broadcast video to the watch directly from the phone’s camera. You cannot talk on these hours (although for some reason you can receive a call). And they really are not very useful without a phone, unfortunately, in my case, even as a watch and pedometer. Because sometimes they spontaneously change time, freeze, lose all fitness readings and generally feel bad without a paired big brother on Android.

And yet for me in this gadget there are a number of undeniable usefulnesses:

  • Notifications about notifications
    They do not make it possible not to notice any notification using a vibration alert and, in particular, an incoming call (of course, if you wish, all notifications can be turned off) while they are in the coverage area of ​​the bluetooth phone. It is especially pleasant that the watch does not make sounds (since most of the time I am at work), but vibrate quietly to myself. The same applies to messages from popular instant messengers, VK and the like.

  • Reminder from Google Calendar
    Since Google Calendar is used in our company and I also use it for personal purposes, thanks to the appearance of notifications and vibrations on the clock, it has become much easier not to be late for meetings and not to forget about plans.

  • Pieces of message text when it is inconvenient to use the phone
    When my hands are busy (for example, in the car) it is much more convenient to be able to read at least excerpts of incoming mail and messages only by slightly tilting my hand. At the same time, if you scroll left to the notification of the same Google Hangouts, you can see the full version of the correspondence.

  • Pedometer and synchronization with Google Fit
    In the pedometer, I don’t like that instead of updating the readings at each step (autonomously such a miracle of technology costs ebay $ 0.82 ), it does this only occasionally (sometimes steps after 100). But on the other hand, the final testimony is not very far from the truth and, of course, glad that at last it all began to integrate with Google Fit. As a result, you can now see such beautiful graphics at fit.google.com:



  • Speech recognition for cocking a timer or adding notes
    Not often I have a passionate desire to speak with the phone or watch, but when, for example, I go to the kitchen and hands in something like flour, it is quite convenient to ask the watch to set a timer in N minutes

  • Displaying data from some applications
    After I bought a bluetooth heart rate monitor, I liked the ability to start the famous Endomondo app specially tuned for Android Wear right from the clock and display the current heart rate and other readings directly on their display.

  • Time
    And ... paradoxically, it’s still more convenient for me to watch time on a watch than on a smartphone, especially if for some reason it’s in the trunk of a car.

  • Music
    Although I do not particularly use the function of offline playback of music from my watch to a bluetooth headset, I think that this function can be quite useful. To do this, you need to subscribe to Google Music unlimited, buy an album or just upload your audio collection (up to 30,000 songs!) Using Google Play Music Manager. Well, then, all the albums that you decide to keep on your phone will be synchronized with your watch. True, their memory is 4GB, so, as Google promises, the most recently played music and playlists will be synchronized with the clock.

  • Sleep phases
    If you are ready to sleep with the clock on your hands, the function of determining the phases of sleep and turning on the alarm when you exit the deep phase can be useful. For this, there is, for example, the very popular Sleep As Android application , however, so far the developers have managed to reduce the battery consumption of this gadget only to 40% per night. It seemed to me 40% - this is a bit much, and it’s very uncomfortable to sleep with these rather big hours.

Updates


Updates on Android Wear are managed by Google itself, and therefore you do not have to wait until the manufacturer of your gadget decides (if it decides) that it is time to work hard and finally integrate with the updated version of OS.

Therefore, pretty quickly (somewhere in the end of September) the first update came, and as they wrote in many articles, the clock began to work longer without a charge. It has already made me happier.

The next update was not long in coming, and after about a month, I got integration with Google Fit, which was very buggy then. In the beginning, he often ignored the readings of the pedometer of the watch, but used only the pedometer of the phone and was generally unstable and wretched. But I was already pleased that Google was thinking in the right direction. It also became possible to hide notifications without deleting them, but only by swiping down. This innovation also pleased me, because I often want to look at the watch without canceling anything, and when the time is somewhere between 5 and 7 (I use the dials), the notifications greatly interfere with attempts to determine the exact time:



With the latest update, Google brought the OS version to 5.0.1 and added a few innovations that I really expected. I was particularly annoyed by the frequent random shutdown of all notifications due to the fact that I pulled the upper status bar down a little more than was required to display the current battery charge. Now it can calmly remain lowered down, and to the already existing mode of turning off all notifications, the ability to leave important ones, as well as the theater, sun mode and for some reason another opportunity to open the settings (for me personally, double tap on the screen or long press on the only one the button seemed so sufficient).

Also, finally, third-party dials began to appear and one of them seemed nice to me (all the arrows and gears are moving):



At the same time, the application on the phone is also updated to communicate with the Android Wear watch. Of the new features, I was most interested in “Keep track of battery consumption.” It allows you to see how many hours worked after the last charge and which of the applications (according to Android) consumed which part of the charge:



There is no problem with the performance of the watch after a series of updates. Nothing freezes and brakes. It seems that for the current functionality of Android Wear, a 4-year-old processor is enough.

Battery


The battery capacity of 300mAh, which was printed on the battery, upset many, although Motorola said that it was the minimum value, but actually promised there were 320mAh (despite the fact that only 300mAh in the thick Samsung Gear 2).

There are different opinions about the battery life of the Moto 360. I can only say that in the first weeks they were barely enough for the day of viewing notifications, measuring heart rate and steps. I don’t manage to follow the advice recommended by many to turn off the “Ambient mode” / “Prevent hibernation”, because it is very annoying to wait a little for the display to turn on when you turn your hand when you just have to look at the black circle. At the same time, in “Ambient mode” I at least see the time faded. And the worst thing is that otherwise sometimes the screen remains completely off, if, according to the device, I turned my hand incorrectly.

Over time, the updates mentioned by me came, I stopped using the useless heart rate monitor and now I charge them steadily every second night. At the same time, the display eats the most energy per unit of time, therefore, with the active use of, for example, Endomondo and frequent admiring the long distance traveled, calories, etc., the clock can be completely discharged in a day. But at night at the docking station (included), the clock looks like this:



Display


Yes, this is not OLED or AMOLED. This is an IPS with a resolution of 320 × 290 pixels. I can honestly say - if you look closely, the pixels are noticeable (their density is 205 ppi), but I do not look closely and do not notice. It is also very important for me that in the sun there is enough backlight to comfortably use this gadget. There are no problems with viewing angles either.

The color rendition is pretty tolerable and with the current Android Wear functionality it is almost impossible to evaluate. Unless, when using the watch as the shutter button of the phone’s camera, then the result comes in the form of a mini-photo, which, however, cannot be increased.

External wear


As soon as I put the watch on my hand for the first time, I immediately noticed that the strap with the boiled horween leather got noticeable folds. Because I was afraid that this is a weak part of this gadget and it will be the first to lose its presentability. But ... it took 4 months of daily use at work and rare wearing in the gym, and it looks about the same (although the folds received in the early days did not go anywhere). On non-sapphire Gorilla Glass 3, too, it has not yet been able to notice a single scratch. As for the case, it is made of really durable metal and is quite tolerably painted. So, despite the sometimes strong blows on the metal railing of the stairs for hours, there are no dents or chips of paint.

disadvantages


  • Pulse
    As I already noted, it seemed to me that this function works very poorly on this device.

  • Working without a paired phone
    Despite many updates, this problem has not disappeared - after a certain time of using the watch without a phone nearby, it still sometimes reboots and loses the time and pedometer.

  • Battery
    Yes, I am quite able to charge the watch every two days, but still this is not serious! I can imagine how in 15 years my son will laugh, asking: “Dad, did you really wear a watch that could work for a maximum of 2 days?” Moreover, my grandfather is already laughing ...

  • Pairing with a new device
    Again, unfortunately, the problem of the first pairing is still relevant. Not only does it take quite a lot of time, and besides, I never managed to pair the watch with a new phone without first resetting all the settings with the Moto 360. Moreover, after a successful first pairing, everything works fine and the watch automatically connects without problems when I turn on bluetooth on the phone or return to its coverage area. At the same time, we must pay tribute - the watch works via the Bluetooth 4.0 protocol, it doesn’t put the phone too much and allows you to simultaneously connect other devices to it from heart rate monitors to headsets.

Total


In general, I am satisfied with the gadget and believe that it costs its $ 249.99. Yes, this is the price on the Google website, but it is quite possible to order it to Russia, having received a virtual US mailing address - fortunately, now there are many services that provide this service. And I actively used them to buy Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and everything else, when I lived in Russia a year and a half ago. For example, hereAt the end of the article, the author tells in detail how he spent only $ 16.64 on delivery and received the gadget after 13 days, bypassing everyone’s beloved Russian Post. You do not have to worry about the charger - its adapter is designed to work from 100 to 240V at 50 / 60Hz, so just buy an adapter from the American plug (some European adapters are also suitable) to a domestic one in any electronics store, or you can just use the charger from phone (input to the wireless Qi dock microUSB, adapter output current 500mA).

Here, it seems, about all my impressions of this wonderful device of the company not officially represented now in the Russian Federation. Moreover, I remember well the time (I worked there then) and the reasons for leaving Russia: loss of image.
There was also a reluctance (and, given the state of Motorola at that time, and the impossibility) to invest a lot of money in its change in this market.
I hope the company's latest successful Android devices will change this stereotype that is not relevant today.

PS I also prepared a video review of these hours after 4 months of use. The gadget in all its glory can be seen here . Sorry for my English =)

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