Andy Faust, writing for WatchAware, explores the differences between Apple’s square watch face and the Android Wear round design. In a nutshell, Apple got it right. A square display is perfect for scrolling data. No way around it.
But:
Round Android Wear (or other) smartwatches are at an almost complete feature disadvantage to Apple Watch. Except one. Yet if they continue to position their circular screen approach as predicated on traditional analog watch design cues, they’ll never be able to play their sole trump card upon Apple’s (overflowingly) green table. They must get their bearings right and move forward. They must forget the timepiece, and they must embrace the compass.
To understand what I mean, just put on a wristwatch. Now glance down at your wrist, as if checking the time. Don’t exaggerate things — just twist your arm towards yourself in that standard, natural motion you’re used to. More likely than not, you’ll notice that your watch probably isn’t oriented in the easiest-to-read manner. For analog or basic digital affairs, this is hardly a problem, as you’ve long been conditioned to read simple watch displays even when viewed from various off-center positions.
Here’s the kicker:
But the benefit to a circular display is that the entire display can rotate without any data loss — just like the inside of a compass. This means that, once calibrated with your head-level as “north” (you are a star, after all!), the UI will always know where your smartwatch is in relation to your eyeballs. And exactly as a compass always points north, your smartwatch display will always balance itself for maximal viewing, allowing for centered, left-to-right (or right-to-left) reading no matter how off-center your wrist happens to be. No more turning and twisting your head like a chump! (The calibration shouldn’t be complex, either. You’d simply hold the device up to your face in a vertical manner, follow a few prompts to move your arm here and there, and manually make minor adjustments to the amount of display “spin” as needed.)
This is an interesting read, good food for thought.
this only works when there are numbers, ect. on the watch face – i use the minimal watch face, details all dialed down on my apple watch, and without it always being oriented the same way, it would not work. also, this can only work with a camera for face tracking, as you can’t calibrate motion sensors that well over a longer timespan. cover the path between your face and the camera, and it’s off. also, UI-navigation would probably be pretty awkward, when the watch face re-orients with every slight little hand movement. some people would probably get dizzy as well. it gets even more confusing with physical buttons. remember, this is 360 degrees, we’re talking about, not a 4-way-90-degrees ipad screen rotation.
in short: i don’t think, that this would work at all. a compass also doesn’t work like that. you usually orient it’s case toward’s its display, after you’ve looked where north is. and even if you don’t, it shows the directions relatice to the way, you’re holding it/you’re moving, so then you have read it sideways. which really isn’t a problem, humans got an auto-rotate function called “brain” anyways. (which tend to get confused, when something they are looking at, moves with their motion – just ask occulus developers)
i don’t think, that round watch faces have to be at a huge dis-advantage from a ui standpoint – after all, you can scroll ui items circular as well, just imagine an “inverted” clickwheel navigation (where the input is done via straight motions, but the output works circular). they’d just need to think about UI very hard and also design custom hardware (batteries and electronic boards don’t have to be square). and that won’t happen, because most android manufacturers just don’t get design being everything you see and work with, not just hardware and not just from an aesthetical point of view.
also, andy faust is right – despite getting the bigger surface area, you’ll nearly always have to “throw away” space on a round display.
thats the big feaure of round? yawn.
When the iPad was first released many complained about the black bars when viewing a video. Some manufacturers responded by creating tablets that were 16:9 ratio. But in their moment of glee they forgot that web pages couldn’t show much content and text documents were swallowed by the on screen keyboard. But hey, no black bars!
Design decisions are always difficult and always involve compromises. And it seems that Apple makes better design decisions than the rest.