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Apple today announced the seventh iteration of its famous watch. The signature design and appearance remains, despite many small tweaks, but the biggest improvement presented by Apple is a 20% larger screen compared to the previous 6 Series. Looking at that big, beautiful screen and then staring at the Galaxy Watch 4 on my wrist, I couldn’t help but sigh and wonder, once again, why couldn’t we have more choices in the Android world. I would like to have a rectangular watch under Wear OS.
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When Android Wear was introduced in 2015, most of the available options were dotted with rectangular screens. The LG G Watch, Asus ZenWatch, Samsung Gear Live, and Sony SmartWatch 3 were big, bulky watches that looked more like a 20th century wrist calculator than modern technology. Compared to all of them, the rounded Moto 360 looked like alien tech with its sleek, stylish and fashionable design. The flat tire didn’t matter: we all wanted “real” rounded smartwatches to show off on our wrists, not inelegant square plastic patches.
The original round watch, the Moto 360.
Since then, the obsession with circular Wear OS watches has only grown. Despite more than a hundred new models released from different brands, I could only 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 over 90% of all Wear OS watch models ever released – and 100% of all major watches like TicWatch, all Fossil and Samsung sub-brands. But it must stop.
Circular displays and watches look cool, but most people who have used one will tell you that their functionality is greatly diminished due to this form factor. You get a few full-width lines of text 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 display – there are large margins on either side to ensure that a few lines of text can be left aligned at the same level instead of centered. 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 usable display area.
Besides the watch face, I would say that every app or function suffers from this rounded shape. This detracts from the whole experience, shows less information, and allows more limited space to interact with it. Its only redeeming functional quality is the rotating bezel, but very few smartwatches have it.
From left to right: Apple Watch Series 3, 6 and 7.
Compare that to the Apple Watch Series 7 and its big screen where everything aligns properly without being forced into it, and you get a lot more screen area to see and interact with your information. It’s not even a fair fight, in my opinion. I want that bigger screen, I want to see more messages, bigger graphics, bigger buttons, a full keyboard, and all the benefits that come with using a rectangular shaped watch.
Above: Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Notice the margins. Below: Apple Watch Series 7.
Even the “it looks like a real watch” argument is moot at this point. Mechanical watches can be rectangular, square, and have many more shapes than just a circle, so why should smartwatches be limited to just one silhouette? It also seems forcefully regressive. Imagine if all the TV makers decided that they would continue to make huge CRT-shaped TVs even after LCD and OLED technologies were invented, just because people aren’t used to fine-tuning TVs. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across.
Apple has also shown that you can embrace the rectangular form factor without sacrificing sophistication or elegance. I’ve seen a lot of his watches around Paris and not once have I thought “Oh, that looks ugly”.
At this point, the only argument for maintaining the circular look is to avoid being mistaken for an Apple Watch, but is it worth the sacrifice? I would say no. It’s time for us to admit that this design is worth exploring and that Android users should have it among the top candidates for Wear OS.
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