Moto 360 Battery Is 300 mAh Only In Name, Really 320 mAh

One of the benefits of teardowns is discovering details that never make it to marketing materials or even reviews. That might just be what iFixit stumbled upon when it broke open the Moto 360 smartwatch, finally available to the public, and discovered that the battery was seemingly not what Motorola said it would be.

Companies are required by law to put informational labels on components, especially batteries. So you would expect that the Moto 360's battery would follow suit and indeed it does. That said, the writing on the battery unambiguously says "300 mAh". That wouldn't be much of an issue considering that most Android Wear smartwatches aside from LG G Watch sport that same battery capacity. The only problem is that Motorola has been advertising a 320 mAh for its timepiece. Was Motorola lying? Not exactly. At the very least, it could be considered a white lie of sorts.

In response, Motorola says that battery is actually both. Its output ranges from 320 mAh normally down to 300 mAh minimum. It goes on to say that in most regular-sized batteries, both the minimum and the normal capacities are listed. But due to space constraints on such a small battery, Motorola decided to play it safe and just write down the minimum. Whether or not there is actually still some space available to write down both figures is something for you to decide. Here's Motorola's statement in full:

"The typical battery capacity for Moto 360 is 320 mAh and the minimum is 300 mAh. In the mobile industry, sometimes both the minimum and typical capacity is listed on the battery, with the typical capacity quoted as the official battery size. Both figures are included on the batteries of our Moto X, Moto E and Moto G devices. In the case of smaller devices, we aren't always able to list both figures. For Moto 360 we only had room for one figure and choose to list the minimal capacity of the battery. We see how this can be confusing and we will look into ways to add the typical capacity as well in the future."

It's amusing how Motorola admits that their decision can be confusing but only now that the cat is out of the bag. Perhaps the company was banking on people not opening up their delicate smartwatches at all. And with a rather dismal repairability index of 3 out of 10, you probably wouldn't want to either.

VIA: Android Authority