Newsletter
The Motorola Moto 360 went on sale today after the Motorola announcement on the Motorola website, the Google Play Store and the Best Buy websites for $250 with a leather strap. If you wanted one with a metal strap, your choice was to either buy one today and the metal strap separately at an additional $80, or wait for an undetermined period of time and pay around $300. However, the smartwatch quickly went out of stock (but it did last longer than the Nexus 4 in 2012!). Now, the Moto 360 has been eagerly anticipated as it was previewed at Google I/O 2014 but Google told the world that it would be released later in the year. Let’s just say that there was plenty of pent up demand for the device!
Let me remind you about the Moto 360, which is the first Android Wear smartwatch announced with a circular design rather than a square one. That circular design holds a 1.56-inch, 320 by 290 pixel LCD screen protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The device is 46mm in diameter and 11.5mm deep, weighing 60g without the strap. The Moto 360 is powered by a TI OMAP 3 processor (the LG G Watch and Samsung Galaxy Gear Live come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400) equipped with 512 MB of memory and 4 GB of internal storage. It includes Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy for pairing with your Android smartphone and 9-axis pedometer, ambient light and optical heart rate sensors. Motorola promises “all day” battery life thanks to its 320 mAh internal rechargeable battery and unlike most of the competition, the Moto 360 comes with wireless charging (with a charger included in the box).
Given the huge level of interest in the first circular watch face Android Wear device, I am not surprised that the Moto 360 is out of stock so quickly. I am also not surprised that Motorola are claiming that availability may be “limited for a while” yet. As I have written before, hunger marketing is a tempting opportunity for any business and we have been waiting for three months for the 360! However, if you are desperate for the Moto 360, you can look on eBay where many sellers are trying to profit from the launch by selling their device at around twice the initial cost. Are you desperate to get your hands on the Moto 360? Would you pay $500 to buy one from eBay rather than wait for stock to be available? Let us know in the comments below!