I loved the old Moto 360 — the original, not the 2019 reboot. The funny thing is, though, I never actually had one, I just liked what it stood for. It was a sign of smartwatches becoming more like everyday wearables, accessories to be shown off rather than simply tracking steps and telling the time. Then, just as I was in a position to try a Moto 360 for myself, Motorola axed it from the family and dove back into the smartwatch dark ages.
Now, it might be back. According to a leak from Android Headlines, Motorola has a new Moto 360 in the works, possibly coming sometime this year. And, if it does, I only have one request: Please, please, please, get it right, Motorola. Here’s what that’ll take.
Would you buy a new Motorola smartwatch? 4 votes Yes, the Moto 360 was great 75 % No, its time has passed 25 %
Above all else, give us Wear OS
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
Motorola has done Wear OS before — in fact, it did Wear OS when it was still called Android Wear and felt like the forgotten stepchild of the Google family. Unfortunately, that forgotten status meant that we had a hard time finding things to like about the state of Motorola’s wearable operating system, and it put us in the camp that maybe the Moto 360 needed a bit of a break.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. Well, not for Wear OS, but definitely for Motorola. As other smartwatches like the Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch, and OnePlus Watch have embraced and refined Wear OS, one of its earliest adopters has languished in the land of RTOS (real-time operating system). Motorola’s cheap (or relatively cheap) launches like the Moto Watch Fit and Moto Watch 120 have tried to make do with what feels like a clone of Apple’s WatchOS, but without the surrounding apps or strong fitness-tracking background that make the Apple Watch a reliable option for so many people.
Wear OS has come a long way since Android Wear, and it's time for Motorola to go back.
So, the first thing the new Moto 360 has to do is adopt Wear OS. Motorola needs to accept that its current watch software isn’t good enough for anything and go back to what Google has worked so hard on. These days, Wear OS feels like the watch operating system we hoped for when it was called Android Wear, boasting a mountain of app integrations, connected Google products, and tons of watch faces, whether Motorola returns to the flat tire design or not.
At the very least, adopting (or re-adopting) Wear OS should relieve some of the stress of Motorola’s rumored wearable. By letting Google build the bones, Motorola can optimize some of the best features of the old Moto 360 for a brand-new generation, embracing fun watch faces, clever throwbacks, and hopefully a unique feature or two. In my head, it feels like the close relationship between Hello UX and stock Android, just shrunk down to a watch.
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