Apple today announced the seventh iteration of its famous watch. The design and look of the signature are maintained, despite many small adjustments, but the biggest improvement that Apple has introduced is a screen 20% larger than the previous series 6. Looking at this big beautiful screen and looking down the Galaxy Watch 4 on my wrist, I couldn’t help but sigh and wonder, once again, why we couldn’t have more options in the Android world. I would love to have a rectangular clock with Wear OS.
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When Android Wear was introduced in 2015, most of the available options were splashed with rectangular screens. The LG G Watch, Asus ZenWatch, Samsung Gear Live, and Sony SmartWatch 3 were large, bulky watches that looked more like a twentieth-century wrist calculator than a piece of modern technology. Compared to all of them, the rounded Moto 360 looked like a weird piece of technology with its beautiful and sleek fashion design. The smooth tire didn’t matter: we all wanted “real” rounded smart watches to be displayed on the wrist, not some sleek square plastic slabs.
The original rounded watch, the Moto 360.
Since then, the obsession with Wear OS circular clocks has only grown. Despite more than a hundred new models released by various brands, I was only able to find four that did not have a rounded form factor: the Asus ZenWatch 2, the Polar M600, the Xiaomi Mi Watch, and the Oppo Watch. Overall, rounded watches make up more than 90% of all Wear OS watch models ever released, and 100% of all major watches like the TicWatch, all sub-brands of Fossil and Samsung. But that has to stop.
Circular screens and watches look great, but most people who have used them will tell you that their functionality is greatly diminished due to this form factor. Get some lines of text of maximum width and everything else is cropped at the top and bottom. But even the maximum width doesn’t take advantage of the full width of the screen: there are large margins on either side to make sure some lines of text can be aligned to the left at the same level instead of centering. the. Looking at my Galaxy Watch 4 now, almost 50% of the width is wasted between the physical bezel and the artificial margins, leaving such a small display area.
In addition to the face of the watch, I would say that every application or function suffers from this rounded shape. It is detrimental to the whole experience, showing less information and allowing more limited space to interact with it. Its only functional quality that redeems is the rotating bezel, but very few smart watches have it.
From left to right: Apple Watch Series 3, 6, and 7.
Compare that to the Apple Watch 7 Series and its large screen, where everything is properly aligned without having to do so, and where you get a lot of screen to view and interact with your information. In my opinion, it’s not even a fair fight. I want a bigger screen, I want to see more messages, bigger graphics, bigger buttons, a full keyboard and all the advantages of using a rectangular clock.
The envelope: Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Look at the margins. Low: Apple Watch Series 7.
Even the “it looks like a real clock” argument is debatable at the moment. Mechanical watches can be rectangular, square, and can have many other shapes other than a simple circle, so why should smartwatches be restricted to a single silhouette? He also feels regressive in strength. Imagine all the TV manufacturers deciding that they would still make huge devices in the form of CRT even after inventing LCD and OLED technology, just because people are not used to thin TVs. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it is achieved.
Apple has also shown that you can adopt the rectangular shape factor without sacrificing sophistication or elegance. I’ve seen a lot of his watches around Paris and I haven’t thought a single time “Oh, that sounds ugly”.
At this point, the only argument in favor of staying with the circular look is to avoid being confused with an Apple Watch, but is it worth the sacrifice? I would say no. It’s time to admit that this design is worth exploring, and Android users should have it as an option among the top Wear OS candidates.
