When Motorola first showed off the Moto 360 smartwatch back in March, most responded to it with enthusiasm. At that time, the Moto 360 was the only true smartwatch with a round face and classic watch design. It was the smartwatch that everyone was waiting for, but fast-forward a few months and now the Moto 360 is not alone.
At IFA, LG introduced the round G Watch R and Asus debuted the ZenWatch, which has a rounded, rectangular face and a premium leather strap. Motorola officially announced the Moto 360 on September 5 and the watch goes on sale for $250 at 11 a.m. CST, but now it has some competition. Nonetheless, many early reviewers are still calling the Moto 360 the smartwatch to beat.
Related: Motorola completely reinvents Bluetooth headsets with Moto Hint Earpiece
The Moto 360 has all the specs we’ve come to expect on a smartwatch. It features a 1.56-inch LCD screen made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 that has a resolution os 320 x 290 pixels. The smartwatch is powered by a TI OMAP 3 processor and 512MB of RAM. Motorola packed 4GB of storage into the timepiece, which pairs with your Android smartphone (Android 4.3 or higher) via Bluetooth 4.0.
It also runs Android Wear and features a 320mAh battery, which Motorola says will give you all day battery life, and it supports Qi wireless charging and comes with its own charging pad. The Moto 360 also sports a heart rate monitor, pedometer, and a IP67 waterproof rating.
What really sets the Moto 360 apart from its competitors is its design. The Moto 360 has a round screen and a real leather strap. The screen isn’t perfectly round and the circle is slightly cut off at the bottom, but it’s not too noticeable. Although the LG G Watch R has a round screen, it doesn’t have the same minimalistic look and feel as the Moto 360. The Moto 360 has a round button on the side, just like a normal watch, and the frame is made of stainless steel.
It comes in three color options: light stainless steel case and gray leather band, light stainless steel case and stone leather band, and dark stainless steel case and black leather band. Motorola will open the Moto 360 up to customers at 11 a.m. CST for $250.
Google unveiled a special version of Android meant for watches and wearable devices on March 18. We were shocked and pretty excited at the news, which you can learn all about in our Android Wear OS Guide. More shocking than the OS might be the new shape smartwatches with the software installed can come in.
Updated on 08-14-2014 by Malarie Gokey: Motorola sent out invites to the press for a September 4 event in Chicago where the Moto 360 is expected to launch alongside other products.
After months of suspense, Motorola finally announced a launch date for the Moto 360. The company issued invitations to the press for a September 4 event in Chicago. The invite shows a colorful piece of origami, which entreats you to “choose to discover” and “choose to have fun,” before unfolding to reveal images of several products, and finally, the invite itself. Based on the images shown in the invite, Motorola may also introduce the X+1 and a new G smartphone, as well as some kind of headphones, in addition to the long-awaited Moto 360.
Alongside Google’s big reveal, Motorola officially unveiled the first smartwatch with a circular touchscreen. The Moto 360 looks almost like a regular wristwatch, except the round face is a single LCD (or AMOLED) panel. Science fiction shows have long toyed with circular screens, but since computers took off, we’ve never fully embraced a computing product with a screen that was anything but rectangular or square. Sometimes those rectangles are curved or bent, but because pixels are square, the screens that occupy our life have matched. Even the first smartwatches, from the Pebble to the Samsung Gear Fit, are square or oblong.
Motorola has stayed tight-lipped about the Moto 360’s specification, but a little more about it was revealed during a live Google Hangouts call on March 19. Let’s recap everything we’ve learned about this exciting smartwatch.
Here’s what we know about Moto 360:
Sadly, the Hangout didn’t provide us with as much detail as we hoped. We didn’t even get a good, close look at the Moto 360 itself. More Hangouts are promised during the run up to release, and the closer we get, the more information will be made public. At the moment though, the finer points regarding the Moto 360 remain a mystery. We’ll be keeping a close, ahem, watch on it, and bring you more news as it’s released.
Updated on 08-04-2014 by Malarie Gokey: Added new photos of Moto 360 wireless charger and photo size comparison with LG G Watch. Photos courtesy of Mister Gadget.
Updated on 08-04-2014 by Malarie Gokey: Added alleged press shots of the Moto 360 leaked by @Evleaks.
Updated on 08-01-2014 by Williams Pelegrin: The Moto 360 will reportedly be made of plastic rather than metal. In addition, it will reportedly be 13.5mm thick.
Updated on 06-25-2014 by Williams Pelegrin: Google revealed that the Moto 360 will go on sale later this summer.
Updated on 06-24-2014 by Malarie Gokey: Added leak of Moto 360 wireless charger from FCC website.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.