So Motorola had their big event yesterday (the 4th) in Chicago and finally showed off the Moto 360 in the metal instead of just those teaser shots we've been staring at since March. Also the new Moto X and something called the Moto Hint, which is basically a tiny earbud that listens for "OK Google Now" without you touching your phone. I've had six browser tabs open since about 10am comparing specs and honestly I'm a little disappointed, though not for the reason you'd think.
Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. It's round. An actual circular watch face, not a rectangle pretending to be classy. After years of looking at square Pebbles and rectangular... everything, seeing a round display that actually looks like a watch on your wrist is kind of a big deal. $249, available "later this year," which in gadget-announcement language usually means October or November if we're lucky, January if we're not.
Here's my complaint though, and I know I'm not the only one who noticed: there's a black bar at the bottom of the display. A little strip that isn't part of the round screen, sitting right at six o'clock. People are already calling it the "flat tire" and that's exactly what it looks like. Apparently it's housing the ambient light sensor, which fine, sensors have to go somewhere, but it kind of undercuts the whole "look, a real round watch!" pitch when the first thing you notice is the one part that ISN'T round. I get why it's there. I still don't love looking at it.
The Moto X update is the one I'm actually more likely to buy, if I'm being honest. Snapdragon 801, 5.2 inch display, and Motorola's doing that thing again where you can customize the back panel material — wood, leather, a bunch of colors — through Moto Maker before you order. Started at $99 on contract, $499 off-contract for the 16GB model, which feels about right for what's basically a flagship phone from a company that isn't Samsung or Apple. I still have my original Moto X from last year in a drawer somewhere because I upgraded early to a Nexus 5, and I kind of regret it now looking at these specs.
Moto Hint is the one nobody's talking about and I think that's a mistake, because it's genuinely weird in a good way. It's an earpiece, no wire, no visible mic arm, that sits in your ear and listens for you to say commands, and it's supposed to vibrate softly to read things to you without you pulling your phone out. Bone conduction is involved somehow. I don't fully understand the tech and the demo videos I've seen are not exactly illuminating, but $150 for something that might replace half the reasons I take my phone out of my pocket at the gym is intriguing enough that I'll probably end up buying one just to figure out if it's a gimmick.
All of this is happening two days before Apple's own event, and I can't tell if Motorola timed it that way on purpose to grab a little attention before the iPhone 6 news cycle eats everything alive on the 9th, or if it's just a coincidence of manufacturing schedules. Either way it's smart. Nobody's going to remember Moto 360 pricing details by next Wednesday.
I'll say this for whoever runs Motorola's product team right now (still technically Google-owned for a few more weeks, I think the Lenovo deal hasn't closed yet). They're taking actual design risks instead of just cramming last year's phone into a slightly bigger case and calling it new. The 360 might have a weird tire-shaped notch on the bottom, and it might ship late like everything in this category tends to, but at least somebody's trying something that doesn't look like every other slab of glass on a shelf at Best Buy. I've been wearing a beat up Casio for four years now because nothing in the smartwatch world has felt worth the money or the daily-charging hassle. This is the first one that's made me actually think about it, flat tire and all.
Still not preordering on day one though. I've made that mistake with gadgets before and I'm not doing it again until there's a real review with real battery numbers.