This article is very strange, on page 2 they spend tons of time lamenting the 360 for having a terrible CPU, then run tests they themselves created which don't really support the level of disdain they're showing.
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.
The old http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoactv smartwatch by Motorola also had a OMAP3 CPU and somewhat surprised that was not mentioned as a possible reason for the company's over-comfort with such a dated part in contrast to the alternatives.
On the side note, people need to stop doing benchmarks on a freaking watch. The spec war on smartphones was ridiculous enough, and now they are bringing it to wearables.
"Typically OMAP 3s were built on a 45nm, which puts it at a huge power-usage disadvantage compared to the 28nm LP (low power) process used to make the Snapdragon 400 in every other smartwatch."
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.
"The Bluetooth phone-to-watch connection is unstable and loses connection randomly. Every android wear device we've tested does this".
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 battery life is crucial on a device like this. Moto screwed this device up big time. Old outdated processor that isn't as power efficient as current gen processors. Battery that lasts 24h at most, for a watch, that is off unless you turn your wrist. I would have paid more for higher battery life and a modern processor. This processor is from 2010, I just don't understand.
Agreed, I was looking forward to this smartwatch and don't really care about the raw "speed" of the CPU (as long as it can run the watch face displays well and have basic music controls I'm good, not going to ask it to do much...), but by all reports (common theme in all the reviews I've seen) the battery life is pretty horrific.
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.
The reason is obvious. Moto must have worked on this thing for years, but couldn't make it work well enough. This is the first time that Moto or Google can build something that is marketable. It will take 1-2 generations to be really solid much like Android itself.
On the other hand this means that a second iteration of the Moto 360 will easily have a better battery life just by having a Cortex A7 CPU or even better, a Cortex A53, 50% more efficient than A7 and due next year. Something like a Snapdragon 410 with only 2 cores and no LTE modem would be great. The target is 130mw / core.
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.
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoactv smart watch that was ceased in 2013 has a OMAP3 CPU and with that, can see why they went down that path for a initial product that may of very well been ready much earlier than now for release. Though why not released with the other two upon launch does go against that.
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.
The comparison chart and cover photo show other "real watches" like the "Tag Heuer Aquaracer 300M" which costs only.. $2,300 ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055NBVDM ).
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?
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.
It seemed to me like the watches were in there for size comparison. Even on the costs are wildly different, they show that the Motorola isn't outlandishly large or heavy compared to other fashion watches.
The comparison was about acceptable diameter, thickness and weight for watches. The price is not relevant to point out that the 360 is within "normal" size parameters, and significantly below the upper bound for weight.
> While the outside is a good expression of what a smartwatch should be, the inside is fatally flawed. Motorola inexplicably chose an ancient 1GHz single-core Texas Instruments OMAP 3 SoC to power the 360. For some perspective, that's a 2010-era processor in the same league as the iPhone 4 or Nexus One. Smartwatch processors don't need to be as powerful as their smartphone companions, but there is no reason for them to be old. It's almost as if Motorola raided a dumpster outside the TI factory for parts.
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.
Well, for a smooth user experience in the times you do use them - as the article points out, scrolling is kinda jagged in this device, possibly due to sub-par hardware (or the OS isn't tweaked to the available hardware).
Smartwatches will fail. It seems a cool idea, but like Dick Tracy's wrist-phone, wrist-calculators, and wrist-watch computers (they've been around for many years), they won't take off. Most of us stopped wearing watches the moment we got cell phones. Smartwatches are awkward, and an even smaller display than a smartphone - which are currently increasing in size.
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.
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.
It is really cool to see how history repeats itself in such a predictable fashion. According to the International Watch Magazine, at first wristwatches were seen as a passing fad, with some men even saying that "they would sooner wear a skirt than a wristwatch" [1].
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?
> Most of us stopped wearing watches the moment we got cell phones.
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.
I would put very big money on smart watches not failing.
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.
I'm with you on that, at least in the short term. I honestly don't see a single proper use case why I would want to put some dorky 'smart'watch (which isn't really that smart because it can't work without a cellphone) that I need to take off every night and recharge (maybe even recharge during! the day like with the Moto360 apparently).
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 find it weird that they're critizing the CPU for being old, as if age itself is a bad thing.
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!
> I find it hard to believe an OMAP3 at 1GHz would be insufficient to power a smartwatch.
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.
>I find it weird that they're critizing the CPU for being old, as if age itself is a bad thing.
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.
Can someone tell me why they're using a full Android stack for Android Wear??
To me its doing nothing that small (read very power efficient) micro such as an STM32 or an MSP430 could do with much more efficiency.
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.
It reminds me of Microsoft's early attempts at portable devices, where they seemed to think they needed a huge chunk of the Windows desktop API and its conventions in a phone or tablet. Watches are not phones, they're peripherals, and they don't need such a bulky software stack. Maybe Apple will handle this differently.
I'm a bit disappointed this review doesn't go more into details on how the watch is to use on a daily basis. We've had months to talk about the technical specifications and looks, but now they've finally got one! Did it make them use their phone less? Did it last from morning to evening at typical use? When was it the most useful? When was it the least? The article doesn't seem interested in these issues at all.
I should preface this by saying that I know very little about batteries and consumer electronics, but a little about watches.
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?
This watch looks really great except for the battery life. I hope that Motorola keeps working on it. I would love a longer-lasting successor. I'm worried that the poor reception due to the battery life might kill the whole concept.
E-ink doesn't update fast enough or well enough for a watch. Have you ever used a Kindle? The Pebble uses an "E paper"[1] display which doesn't use a backlight and that watch can last a week. Battery life is proportional to how often the display is updated.
Eh, those Kindle battery life estimates are based on low daily usage IMO. When I'm reading a lot I can easily run down my Kindle in a week. As a watch you would probably be updating the display far more often than an occasionally used Kindle.
I think it's fine to create an artificial battery benchmark to compare watches, but unless that is representative of actual use, it shouldn't be used as the "real battery life" or anything.
What does "terrible performance" mean? Why is there some convoluted benchmark instead of a description -- better yet, a video -- of how it actually works?
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.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Zenst|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Steko|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akfanta|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmgrosen|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DannyBee|11 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] post_break|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] moca|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kayou|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zenst|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nacs|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bobbles|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MBCook|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ekianjo|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
> 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...
[+] [-] wmf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyp0|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bookwormAT|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] caster_cp|11 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|11 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] lutusp|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nkozyra|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ulfw|11 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] sspiff|11 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] masklinn|11 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] petersellers|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] TickleSteve|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dmethvin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasahle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonifico|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oostevo|11 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] shalmanese|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnopgnip|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterclary|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelhoffman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper#Wristwatches
[+] [-] ibrahima|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmelton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] spindritf|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bkeating|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkonecny|11 years ago|reply