Category Archives: Android Wear

Android, Android Wear, Motorola, Samsung, Smartphones, Smartwatches

Motorola’s lessons for Samsung

I’ve been testing three of Motorola’s new devices for the last several days: the new Moto X and Moto G smartphones, and the Moto 360 smartwatch. I don’t do traditional reviews – there are plenty of sites out there that do those well – but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about these devices, briefly, but also about what they can teach us more broadly, and tech Samsung specifically.

Moto X

Last year’s version of the Moto X was already a very good device in a number of ways, and this year’s version fixes several problems: the price/performance ratio feels a lot better, the materials and build make for a more premium experience, and the camera is a lot more competitive. I’ve been using the Moto X as my main phone for the last few days, and I’ve really enjoyed it. The camera still isn’t as good as the iPhone camera, or arguably the Galaxy S5 camera, especially in low light. And the digital shutter mechanism still frustrates me by taking pictures when I’m trying to change the focus point. But it’s an awful lot better, and I’ve taken some nice pictures with it, including this one:

IMG_20140914_162715In short, the Moto X is much better on the things it was bad at. But it’s also got even better at the things its predecessor was good at – namely the little software customizations that added significantly to the stock Android experience without taking it over, adding huge numbers of visual customizations and tweaks, or overloading the device with gimmicks and widgets. What Motorola has done really well in these devices is creating in its software elements that significantly add value to Android without feeling like they’re trying to replace it. They’re done in such a way that they feel like they are – or should be – part of the core OS, both visually and in terms of their functionality and integration into the OS itself. Unless you’ve used stock Android, it would be hard to see where Android itself ends and Motorola’s enhancements to it begin.

In many respects, this is just the sort of thing Samsung should have been working on over the last few years, to set its handsets apart against the flood of other Android phones. Instead, it’s focused on gimmicks – features that are eye-catching and make for good demos, but that don’t really make life easier or improve upon the core Android experience. If Google were keeping Motorola, I would say these features should slowly work their way back into the core Android experience as Motorola invents new ones. Under Lenovo, I wonder to what extent these innovations will continue and to what extent Lenovo will embrace them at a corporate level and build them into its other devices too. If it’s smart, it will realize what it’s getting here and fully embrace it.  Continue reading →

Android Wear, Apple, iWatch, Smartwatches, Techpinions, Wearables

New report and post on smartwatches

1 Comment

My firm, Jackdaw Research, has just published a report for subscription clients on the topic of smartwatches, entitled Smartwatches: Market Prospects. It features several consumer surveys which gauge demand for current and future smartwatch features, and evaluates the current offerings in the smartwatch market. I’m bearish on smartwatches as they currently stand – demand for the features they offer is weak, and that demand is currently being met by weak supply too, as all of the current offerings are flawed by virtue of the compromises they make between battery life, displays, performance and usability. The market is likely to remain small unless something changes – one of those, of course, being a disruptive entry to the market by Apple.

My Techpinions post today summarizes some of the key findings of the report. Here’s a quote:

Measured against these criteria, the current crop of smartwatches on sale does very poorly. I did my own ratings as part of my report, and I ended up with scores which were barely above 50% across these seven categories. Unlike most reviewers, I don’t see the Pebble as the clear leader in this market – in fact, all the devices ended up clustered around a very small range of unimpressive scores. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we should expect much more of these devices before we embrace them, and unless they do more we’re not likely to see them sell above current levels.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper also did an extensive write-up on the report, which you can find here.

There’s more information about the report, and an opportunity to buy it directly, on the Jackdaw Research website. The report is available as part of our subscription research service for clients, and is $500 for non-clients.

Android, Android Wear, Google, Google I/O, Samsung, Smartwatches

The three problems with Android Wear

I’ve been using an Android Wear device – the Samsung Galaxy Live – since I picked it up at I/O last week. I’ve tried a number of other smartwatches before now, and it’s interesting to see the differences. As it’s currently constituted, I see three flaws with Google Wear, two of which seem to be pretty fundamental, and one of which should be fixed soon:

Cards are a bad UI for small screens

Cards make a ton of sense on smartphones and tablets and on the web, where they provide useful visual separation between discrete chunks of information, and they work well on Twitter.com, in Google Now on smartphones, and elsewhere. But on a space-constrained screen they really don’t work because they’re a terribly inefficient use of screen real estate. There are several different layers of information in Android Wear, as shown in this triptych:Android Wear triptych 560px

The first screen is what you see before you interact with a card – the card stays in the bottom half, and takes up just a third of the screen. The amount of information presented is extremely limited. If I then interact with the card, I get the middle screen, which is slightly richer but still takes up only half the pixels on the display. If I then swipe, I get even more information as shown on the right. But the card still only takes up half the screen. Compare this with the Galaxy Gear 2, which (though not a paragon of great UI) uses the whole screen to display notifications. This is a minor annoyance with the weather card from Google Now, but it’s really annoying when a notification comes in about a new email, and just a tiny amount of the email shows by default – I almost always have to tap on the small card to make it big enough to have a real sense of what it’s about. The “glanceability” factor just isn’t there.

The cards UI, with its limited use of the screen space, and the rest given over to a background that really adds nothing, is just not a good fit for such a small screen. It’s a great example of the problem with applying a single design language, essentially without modifications, to multiple form factors. It’s a problem that Microsoft has struggled with too in the form of Windows 8, and one that Apple so far seems to have managed to avoid in providing useful integration between iOS and OS X without taking things too far.

Google Now is still too much just in case and not enough just in time

Continue reading →