Motorola's Moto 360 smartwatch is the hottest gadget this year, but with a mere 310mAH battery, does it last for a day? Here is our analysis...
One of the most stylish looking smartwatches, the Moto 360 is finally available in India via Flipkart and we certainly think it's a cool product to own. However, early impressions of the device concluded that the battery backup was very low.
We got a unit for ourselves and since we were reviewing the unit, we had a chance to check if the battery is really a downer. As soon as we got the Moto 360, (and charged it for atleast two hours) we paired it to an Android device and received a firmware update for the smartwatch. According to the change log, it brings in improvements especially in the battery department. Here is the full change log:
-Smart Battery Saving – When your battery hits 15%, your Moto 360 will turn off ambient mode, so you don't have to remember to.
-Timely Time Checks – Moto 360 will synchronize the time with your phone more often to make sure it is up to the minute.
-User Interface Tweaks – We observed with consumers that there are many times where you want to use your Moto 360 as truly a classic watch—a beautiful way to see the time. A new gesture now lets you see the full watch face without permanently dismissing a notification. Just touch the top of a notification and swipe down. You'll see the notification again when you have another high priority notification.
-Mood Lighting – Moto 360 will adjust to the lighting of the room while charging, so that it isn't too bright or too dark.
-Readying the wires for Bluetooth – There are a couple of under-the-hood enhancements that will pave the way for connecting Bluetooth headsets to the watch.
-Bug Squashing – As usual, bugs are squashed to enhance the overall user experience.
After charging it to a full 100% overnight, we synced it to our smartphone and used it throughout the day. To get an optimal result, we kept the brightness to Auto and switched off the Ambient Screen mode which apparently keeps the display active all the time. Within six hours we saw a drop of about 20%. This involved us occasionally checking mail notifications, changing music tracks and, of course, checking the time. We finally took the watch off late at night with still 17% charge left which is not bad at all.
Considering that this is the first wave of Android Wear, the battery backup is acceptable. While there are certain wearable devices (not Android Wear) which give you a better battery backup, but they don't entirely match up to the hardware. In time, we hope, that this will improve and we won't have another device to charge every night.
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