14 DAY TRIAL // We've written a lot about the Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch, but for all the coverage we've provided, there was still no way to know for sure what the thing would look like. Now, Motorola has finally given a clear answer.
You see, Motorola has a lot riding on the Moto 360. The price of €249 / $249 isn't exactly the smallest sum you could hope for. This is, after all, a wearable gadget, a wrist device. Wrist watches don't sell for this much, unless they're a collector's item or a really high-profile brand.
Sure, smartwatches are expected to be a bit more expensive than your average consumer electronics device, but the sum still needed the watch to have some sort of perk that would draw users in.
Motorola decided to play it safe and provide more than one special asset that other smartwaches did not have. First off, it made the device round.
Secondly, it outfitted it with an OLED color display, which is both bright and colorful, not to mention efficient and thin (you don't need to layer the display over an LED layer, since OLED makes its own light).
Thirdly, Motorola implemented magnetic induction charging technology, which allows the watch to recover its power wirelessly. Among other things, this allows for the watch straps to be changed.
Now, the fourth advantage has been detailed: the availability of multiple faces. Motorola launched a design contest last month, and has now decided which of them it will put up for sale.
You can see them in the gallery below. All the watch faces, bar one or two, have the time clearly on show, and use various methods to display it: watch hands, digits, a mixture of both, contrasting color diagrams, etc.
There are some faces with other indicators though, like a speed meter. Also, a few of the faces have direct link icons to smartphone text messages and other notifications.
There are disappearing graphics elements as well, and other sensor information displays, plus calendars, etc. Basically, it wasn't possible to put everything that the Android Wear OS can display on the face at the same time, so the contest participants tried to go with what was likely to be used most on a wearable gadget of this type.
Unfortunately, there's a single face that shows the incoming message notifications and other calls, plus the tweets and the battery power indicator. Fortunately, this is, in the end, a touchscreen, so you should be able to launch other “windows” or faces to access everything that Android Wear has to offer.
