On March 2014 Motorola showed their first smartwatch, the beautiful Moto 360, and it will launch it on September 4th. It was widely speculated that it adopts an OLED panel - especially as it is always on and the battery drain on an LCD will be quite large.
But today Best Buy posted a product listing by mistake (they took it off-line a short while later) which revealed the Moto 360 specifications: and it uses a 1.5" 320x290 round LCD panel. This is quite a disappointment, I really hoped this beautiful time piece has an OLED display.
On September 4th, Motorola will also unveil new smartphones, probably the follow-up to their flagship Moto X (4.7" 720p AMOLED display). Hopefully Motorola will at least use AMOLEDs in their smartphones...
Comments
What kind of problems are you referring to Kookas?
I think there is very simple reason for this:
As far as I know there are no mass produced round OLED panels...so if they would have gone with OLED the cost would have been almost surely prohibitive given that this would require a special production line at what will initially be low volumes. LCD is far easier in that respect.
Using an LCD for such a device is a terrible terrible terrible terrible idea. I know OLED has it's problems, but it works well enough, however, look at those beautiful virtual watch interfaces. See all that black? That's one of many reasons why this needs to have been an OLED screen. That watch is going to look like shit in a dimmly lit or dark room! The blacks are going to be glowing and it's just going to ruin the virtual clock...I'm so so so disappointed...I can't believe this.
I agree,
for that reason i do not buy them. + OLD 40nm CPU architecture
LG is coming out with an OLED round smartwatch so the production can't be that prohibitive as it will be priced to compete with the Moto 360. Moto dropped the ball on this one and I am sure Gen 2 will not only have an OLED screen but get rid of the 'flat tire' look.
OLED panels still come with a myriad of functional problems though.