Vote in the smartwatch shape poll: round or square?

Smartwatches didn’t just happen overnight, and we’ve seen a lot of different attempts at making them work in the years leading up to what we have now. Some of those very early efforts were basically just tiny phones that would awkwardly strap to your wrist, but eventually we moved into our modern era of intentional, watch-first designs.

Even there, we’ve seen a lot of variation in the decade-plus since getting Android Wear (and now, Wear OS). Early efforts like the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live used rectangular screens, before the Moto 360 and its oh-so-nearly circular “flat tire” display started introducing us to the possibilities of smartwatches that were round.

While Apple’s still running strong with its rectangular watches, the Android world feels like it’s largely committed to shifting its focus over to circular screens. From the Galaxy Watch to the Pixel Watch series, we’re looking at round displays everywhere we turn — even as we recently checked out evidence of Samsung thinking about a “squircle” shape for Galaxy Watch 8 models, the company seems content to keep the screen round.

Is that the way things have to be, though? Are we stuck with a market where if you want a modern, reasonably mainstream Wear OS device, there’s really no rectangular option? Round or nothing?

Let’s pretend for a second that this isn’t the world we live in, and you have your pick of choices when it comes to both styles of smartwatch shape. Which are you going for?

Technically, Wear OS still claims to be happy to support alternate watch shapes, but especially now with Material 3 Expressive on the horizon, we’re increasingly curious about the long-term prospects of anything other than round screens. After all, when that’s the de facto standard, and everything from Wear OS UI elements to third-party apps are primarily targeting circular displays, anything breaking from that pattern is going to look “off” at best.

If you’re still carrying a torch for Apple Watch-style square designs, give a shout out for your favorite rectangular Wear OS model in the comments. We can’t promise that your options are ever going to get any better, but we can always dream, right?