Phandroid
20 best apps & watch faces for the Moto 360
The Moto 360 has been available for a while, but it wasn’t until the last couple updates that it got really good. Battery life has been drastically improved, and performance is better too. Now is a great time to pick one up. If you’re a new Moto 360 user, or you’ve had one for a while, there are some apps and watch faces you need to try. These apps and faces will work on any Android Wear device, but they look especially nice on the Moto 360.
Moto 360 Apps
One of the best uses for a smartwatch is a workout companion. You can easily check your wrist to see stats instead of fumbling for your phone. There are a couple of fitness apps that work with the workout voice commands, but Endomondo is my favorite. You can say “start a bike ride,” “start a run,” or “start a workout” to use your last activity. Once you start a workout you can see stats for duration, distance, speed, calories, and more.
Facer is part app, part watch face. You can use Facer to make your own personal watch faces. It’s incredibly flexible and easy to use. We put together a guide for how to make your own analog or digital watch face. If you’re not feeling creative you can check out Facerepo.com and download faces that other uses have made, including our very own Phandroid watch face!
Everyone loses their phone at some time or another. Find My Phone is an essential Android Wear app that allows you to use your Moto 360 to locate your lost phone. Just make sure you download the app on your phone before it gets lost. Now you can launch it from your watch whenever you can’t find your phone. It allows you to tap a giant button to make your phone ring and vibrate obnoxiously until you find it.
The Moto 360 doesn’t have a lot of security features. It needs a phone to work, but it wouldn’t be hard for someone to just pair it with their own device if they get a hold of it. Lockable is an app that adds a lockscreen to your watch. You can lock your device with a swipe from the top of the display, or set it up to lock after a certain amount of time.
The Moto 360 has a special companion app from Motorola. With the Motorola Connect app you can remotely check the battery life of your 360 and manage a few of the special features that other Android Wear devices don’t have. Those include customizing the built-in watch faces, adjusting your wellness profile, and tracking your smartwatch location. It’s a must-have for the Moto 360.
A few Moto 360 users have reported screen burn-in from the charging screen image. The burn-in leaves an outline of a circle from the charging indicator. Obviously this is something you want to avoid, and the ever-reliable Android developers have a solution. Slumber replaces the standard charging screen with a blank black image. You won’t be able to see the charging progress, but we already told you how to check that with your phone.
SPS: Football Wearable Edition
We haven’t talked a lot about games for Android Wear devices, but they do exist. One of the newest and most fun is a simple game called SPS: Football. You’ve probably played a game like this before. All you do is try to keep the soccer ball in the air as long as possible by heading it with the soccer player. It’s the perfect type of game for a watch.
Tockle enables control of your phone from your wrist. Toggle WiFi and other system settings, send an SMS message, and even activate your awesome Tasker tasks from your wrist. And that is the simplest way to think of Tockle. It’s like Tasker for your Moto 360, or any other smartwatch. The usefulness is really up to your own imagination.
Battery life is a big topic for the Moto 360. At launch the battery life was pretty bad, but a couple recent updates have brought big improvements. If you’re still curious about battery life you can track it with a handy app called Wear Battery Stats. You can see battery life in a chart, and even see which apps are using the most juice. The app can be checked on your watch and phone.
Not many apps have taken advantage of the Moto 360’s circular display. Wear Tip Calculator certainly does. It’s a beautiful and simple app for finding tip amounts at restaurants. The UI is made up of a circle that is used to adjust the tip percentage. This is one of the first few Android Wear apps that look much more at home on the Moto 360.
Moto 360 Watch Faces
The Moto 360 has been the inspiration for many awesome watch faces. If you use Facer you can browse a wide variety in the round section of Facerepo.com. There are also some great watch faces available in the Play Store. Here are a few of our favorites.
What are your favorite apps for the Moto 360? What watch face are you using? Let us know in the comments below!
AT&T starts selling Kindle Fire HDX 7″ today
AT&T and Amazon are continuing their love affair today with the former now selling the Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch. There are a few different ways to pay for it if you’re not interested in getting one straight from Amazon.
You can either pay $99.99 and sign a new two-year agreement, pay for it for $10 over 20 months with AT&T Next, or pay the full $200 outright. You can also get it for $49.99 for a limited time when buying it with the Amazon Fire Phone — no surprise they’re trying to move units of that particular smartphone considering Amazon’s bottom line took a major hit due to its lack of sales.
The Kindle Fire HDX is a very decent tablet for $200. It features 1900 x 1200 resolution and Qualcomm’s 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 inside. You’ll also have 32GB of internal storage to play around with, front and rear cameras, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band WiFi N and 4G LTE radios.
Loaded up software-wise is Amazon’s Fire OS which connects you to movies, music, apps, games, books and many of Amazon’s other great services. The the phone might not be all that, but no one has ever really gone too wrong buying a Kindle Fire tablet. Be sure to stop by an AT&T store or head online to order one if you’ve been waiting for the carrier to offer it on their own store shelves.
[via AT&T]
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