The Tale of the Moto 360, its underwhelming experience and why I'm returning it.

Yesterday, I picked up a returned (open-box) first generation Moto 360 for the low price of £130.

At the time, I thought this was a great deal! The Pebble Time (another smartwatch that I had been looking at) was going to be £149.99, and had less features. I thought it was a steal!

Then the troubles started.

I opened the box when I got home and plugged it in (well, dropped it into it's cradle) and waited for it to start up. When it did, I wasn't greeted by a setup screen, but the default watchface. And then I got a notification telling the previous owner (whose name I will not disclose) that his phone was ready to be collected from a service center. This was not Motorola's fault, but the store's fault for not erasing it, despite it saying it had been on the box (the section stating "Unit reset and" had a checkmark next to it, which I took to mean it had been wiped clean). Oh well. A quick factory reset fixed that problem.

I waited for it to charge to 80% so I could set it up (a weird quirk of Android Wear, the watch's operating system) and connected it to my phone. It installed an update, and then taught me how to use Android Wear.

Immediately, I noticed that it was oddly sluggish. Then a message popped up saying "Android Wear is not responding. Would you like to close it?" I chose yes. This happened again shortly after, and at that point I decided to go to bed. It then told me it had downloaded another update, and wanted me to charge it to 80%. Now, at this point, I'd had the watch unplugged for about half an hour. Guess how much charge it had left.

26%.

That's just awful! I know I was using it more than normal, but I'd expect it to be at worst at 60%, but 26??? That's just terrible.

I let it charge back up and installed the update. The watch seemed to crash less afterwards. (For any geeks reading my blog, it was running Android Wear 5.1.1 and got updated to 6.0 or 6.0.1, but I can't remember specifically.) I used it this morning as a run tracker, and that seemed to work reasonably well.

However, the app experience (one of the three things you buy a smartwatch for, as well as being a watch and giving you your notifications on your wrist) was distinctly underwhelming.

Apart from Spotify and TripAdvisor, not many of my day-to-day apps seemed to support Android Wear particularly well. For instance, Samsung's email app (on a Galaxy S6) only let you see the subject of the emails, but not the first few lines of the email. (like how a Facebook comment tells you which post it was on and what the comment says.)

When I went on to the Play Store to see what apps I could download for my watch, I saw that Duolingo was compatible with it. I thought that would be pretty cool.

At this point, I discovered that there was no way to tell if an app was installing, so I just waited.

Turns out that the Duolingo Android Wear app no longer works. I don't know if it ever EXISTED. And most of the other apps were just developer utilities (memory usage, battery statistics, et cetera).

Finally, I tried the one thing that it could do that my old, trusty Pebble couldn't do (for free) - navigation. I thought this would be kind of cool, I guess.

"Get me directions to [local coffee shop]"

Oh wow, it actually found-

"That didn't work, try again."

Well maybe that was a fluke. I made sure that everything was updated to the latest version on the watch AND the phone, and...

"That didn't work, try again."

What??? At this point, I stepped out of the bounds of usefulness. (I live in Wales)

"Get me directions to Calais, France."

"That didn't-"

OK, I get the idea. And I'm sure you do. Compared to my old Pebble, it doesn't do anything better, it does some things worse, and the battery life is just horrendous. Motorola, I wanted to like your watch, but it just doesn't work right for me. It's like buying tickets to a Wild West cowboy show, arriving at the theater, finding nobody there but a few hardcore Wild West enthusiasts, and then finding that the lackluster show only lasts five minutes.

In conclusion, the Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch is a slow, jerky watch with terrible battery life (I unplugged it for half an hour to do run tracking, which drained it down to about 62% just by checking the time, having Google Fit track my run and replying to a few texts) and not enough apps to make my purchase worthwhile.In fact, the only praise I have for this thing is that it looks good.

It's back in the box, and it's probably going to be returned soon.

What can you do with a pebble?

Someone said on Facebook "What can you actually do with a pebble?" Well, this is what I've been doing...

• Playing games
• Texting from the shower/bath
• Making calls
• Getting Instagram/Facebook/YouTube/SMS/Reddit notifications

Just a quick followup post. I would have included pics, but my phone was being weird.

My honest opinion on the Pebble Smartwatch.

Ripping open the paper on my birthday presents yesterday, I found a small box. In this small box was a smart watch - a Pebble. More specifically, an orange one.

Putting the watch on my wrist, it seemed very light. And it was. Almost 2 days of constant wearing later, it's still not uncomfortable. I finished unwrapping my other presents and grabbed my phone. Setup was painless on my Galaxy S4 Mini. I loaded a few apps on there. All of them worked first time. Feeling happy, I wore it all day yesterday.

Fast forward to today. Hearing it was waterproof, I took it in the shower. Kept on going. I tried the buttons. All of them worked. I finished washing, and dried it off. Of course, it was soaked and still working.

The screen may seem a bit small at first, but it's actually a good size. It isn't so big that it swamps your wrist, and not so small you need to squint to see it.

The vibrator motor in it is also just right. It buzzes strongly, but isn't like your great-uncle giving you a firm handshake.

All in all, the Pebble is a reasonably affordable smartwatch with a great selection of apps.

I'll post about this soon...