Please, Motorola, give us the Moto 360 we deserve

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.

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.

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.

If you recall, 2014 was a banner year for wearables — and by that, I mean it was the year the Apple Watch debuted. Suddenly, square watches were all the rage, leaving Pebble fans wondering where the credit was for wearing squares before they were cool. It was also a year for fitness bands, fitness bands everywhere. Nike retired its FuelBand, Adidas tried to jump on what was left, and Microsoft decided that the best companion to a Windows Phone was a Microsoft Band.

To me, the original Moto 360 was cooler than all of them. It looked the most like a regular watch, putting a single button off to the side of a circular body and pairing it with a flat tire display that still has a soft spot in my heart, no matter how silly it looked. Besides, that sharp chin allowed Motorola to reduce the rest of its round bezel to nearly nothing, which was ultimately more eye-catching than the missing little sliver.

For the Moto 360 to make a splash in the Wear OS market, it needs to go further. It needs to build a new identity that is as recognizable as the Pixel Watch or the circle-in-a-square Galaxy Watch. To do that, it will have to stay far, far away from eBuyNow — the company that licensed the ability to make wearables like the Moto Watch 40, 70, and 120. All three of those watches felt like not-quite-clones of the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch, and were ultimately made forgettable by their RTOS software.

As it stands, this might be what makes me most nervous about the renders shown above. I can’t shake that the leaked Moto 360 looks an awful lot like the HUAWEI Watch — not the relatively new Watch 5, either — the original model from 2015. It’s certainly one of the smartwatches ever made, not the best or the worst, but definitely one of them.

At the end of the day, I suppose I’ll be able to live with a Moto 360 that looks like a HUAWEI Watch. I’ve been impressed by previous HUAWEI wearables, and at least it means that Motorola is striving for something. However, for a Moto 360 to have a shot at earning a spot on my wrist, I need it to take a step forward in terms of fitness tracking.

Right now, its Wear OS rivals are miles ahead in tracking — on all levels. Google’s acquisition of Fitbit has given it a speed boost in adding features like Daily Readiness and Cardio Load to the Pixel Watch, along with a Target Load metric to help optimize your training. For its part, Samsung added a Galaxy AI-powered Energy Score to its Galaxy Watch 7, which I immediately embraced while reviewing the Galaxy Z Flip 6. It’s still my go-to readiness metric whenever I switch away from my trusty Garmin, even if it’s only for a week or two.

With the current Moto Watch Fit and Moto Watch 120, though, it’s another case of firing up RTOS and hoping for the best. Yes, both watches can track a bunch of activities, but the actual health metrics are confined to calories, steps, heart rate, and sleep quality, with no mention of feminine health support or in-depth estimates like the Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch have.

If Motorola can come within striking distance of its top competition, maybe the Moto 360 has a chance. To do that, though, it will need a comeback on the level of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI or the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. It’ll have to show that it’s learned a thing or two in the six years since the last Moto 360 and that the fire-and-forget days of eBuyNow watches are a thing of the past.

Motorola has proven me wrong once or twice, and I’ll be thrilled if the upcoming Moto 360 can do it again.