Motorola Razr 70 Ultra and Moto Sound Flow Speakers

I've been following the 'flipper' line of modern Razr phones pretty closely, watching it evolve from a device with a small external display only good for, in reality, notifications and an always-on clock/calendar display to the much, much more capable beast I have in my hands now, the Razr 70 Ultra. I also have a Razr 50 and 60 Ultra here, which were important steps on that evolutionary ladder. But now, the latest and greatest in the line has arrived from Moto UK PR for me to review and compare with those previous models.

As a UWB-enabled device, I am also keen to get it hooked up to a pair of the new Moto Sound Flow speakers, making the most of a bunch of fancy audio tricks, some of which nobody else out there is doing yet. But that's for later. First up is the unboxing and spec comparison with, particularly, last year's model, the 60 Ultra. It is worth noting that this same Razr 70 Ultra is available in North America, but dubbed the 'Razr Ultra 2026'.

The box is black and minimalist, smelling of the now to be expected Pantone perfume - otherwise known now as Signature Packing Fragrance! Inside we have the phone in Pantone Orient Blue (Violet Blue), a USB-C to USB-C cable, no charging brick (at least, retail here in the UK), the usual papers, SIM Card Tray Ejector Tool and the same buckle-style silicone-feel one-piece case that the Razr 60 Ultra came with.

I really didn't like this purple-like colour at first, but actually, it's grown on me quite quickly and I've moved away from thinking it's kind of 'bling' to appreciating that, once again, Moto push boundaries with colours and style - so kudos to them, while others often remain in the black, white and grey territory! The back of my Razr 60 Ultra is the wooden finish, and lovely as the idea is to look at, it's always been very slippery. This sample 70 supplied here has a very well-textured matte material, Alcantara (think suede-like microfibre), which is much more grippy and the phone feels as though it could much more easily be used with no case at all. There's also, like last year, a Cocoa Wood unit available if you prefer - and, I think, in other regions, some other colours and finishes, so check your local supply chain's options.

The, what I call, Buckle Case that comes in the box is colour-matched and has some sticky pads to keep it in place, though actually, I don't think they are needed as it's a snug fit without. It has a buckle protruding from the spine on the back, which makes for much easier one-handed use (as you can put a finger or two through it) to balance the tall-when-open phone in the hand. And when the phone is closed, it's a great 'grab handle' for carrying and retrieving from a bag or pocket. It would be even nicer if it was made from the same Alcantara as the back of the phone instead of the more slippery silicone, but it's fine, and included in the box here in the UK. There's also a lanyard loop/clip thingie in the box which, should you want to hang the phone around your neck, you can place between the base of the phone and the case and dangle it from whatever you like!

The elephant in the room is very much that the phone is very, very similar to last year's 60. Certainly physically. In fact, I think it's identical beyond colour and finish choices, measuring 171.5mm tall x 74mm wide x 7.2mm thin unfolded, and 88.1mm x 74mm x 15.7mm folded. They both feel lightweight in the hand at a shade under 200g, with aluminium frames holding everything together. Even last year's cases fit - so that's a plus! You might wonder why Moto bothered to update the line if it's so similar, but there are a few things under the bonnet which are different, which we'll visit straight away.

Firstly, the battery has had a small hike from 4,700mAh to 5,000mAh. This may not seem like much of a leap, but actually, taking into account platform efficiency tuning, it certainly does seem to perform more efficiently for day-to-day use. Tested against my 60 here, depending on how much the external screen is used over the internal - and, as always, how you use the phone - there is a hike. For my average use, I'd say that there's probably a 10% improvement, so beyond the technical 6% reflected in the data. However I use the phone, closed or open, there's no risk of it not making it through my average day, long as they usually are, and to bedtime. In a flip form factor, without adding bulk or thickness, this is a genuinely useful change.

Secondly, there's an improvement in the internal screen's brightness level, moving from 4,500 to 5,000 nits on the 7" plastic LTPO AMOLED display (1224 x 2992 pixels, 464ppi, 22:9 ratio). Again, maybe not looking like a huge jump, but having both in front of me, I can see that out in bright sunlight on adaptive brightness, things are a bit clearer to see. It is not a night and day visual leap in normal lighting, but in direct bright sunlight, visibility and HDR highlight punch benefit noticeably when using the phone outdoors. That tall screen remains great for consuming media or scrolling through long emails and social posts.

The external screen is the same 4" LTPO AMOLED with a peak brightness rating of 3,000 nits (1272 x 1080 pixels, 417ppi) and protected by Gorilla Glass Ceramic. The ratio is technically 10.6:9, but effectively in real-world use, it's square! What we do have on the external display are two fairly big camera lenses, which had to go somewhere, but thought has gone into software tricks to minimise their impact.

Physically, the hinge reinforcement has had an update from steel to titanium. The titanium gives a higher strength-to-weight ratio than stainless steel and allows the hinge structure to be thinner and stronger, which is partly how Motorola squeezed in that larger battery without expanding the phone physically. The folding mechanism doesn't really feel any different to me and continues to allow for the screen to be wedged open at pretty much any angle.

There is, though, certainly an if it ain't broke, don't fix it vibe going on here. The Razr 60 was as much of a flagship as the Motorola Signature, but in a flip format - a veritable powerhouse in a non-candybar design. Much of the components that made it so are continued here with the 70 Ultra - the very fast Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, 16GB RAM, 512GB of storage, 68W wired charging, and 30W wireless charging are all retained. Razr phones prior to the 60 Ultra really didn't feel like flagships, appearing more as experimental novelty phones to test market interest, but now they very much do. As I write, tech news is flying around suggesting that Samsung might be done with flip phones after the Galaxy Z Flip8. I hope that's not a trend, and even if it is for Samsung, I hope Moto continue with this satisfying form factor.

By the way, just so as to confuse everyone, there are more Moto phones in the Razr 70 range! The base Razr 70 retains the smaller 3.63" outer window of the previous model with a lower refresh rate (90Hz) and a Dimensity 7450X processor at £799. There's also a 70 Plus at £999, which gets the full 4" edge-to-edge cover screen running at 165Hz and a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, but bizarrely gets a smaller 4,500mAh battery compared to the base Razr 70's 4,800mAh. It's the Razr 70 Ultra at £1,199, with that Snapdragon 8 Elite, which delivers the top-end performance and hardware efficiency.

The Razr 70 Ultra started out with Android 16 and will get 3 OS updates through to Android 19, alongside 4 years of security updates to April 2030. It's not the 7 years that the Signature got, but then it's a folding device which, with the best will in the world, may well not be up to continual daily hammer in a few years anyway. The IP-rating is the same as the 60 Ultra at IP48. So very good for water, but not so confident for dust. Don't open either up down at the beach! I'm guessing that next year's model will update that to IP68 like other models, but we'll see - it might be trickier for flips than folds.

Setting up was seamless using Google's baseline setup procedure from my Razr 60 Ultra, replicating apps, layout, settings and preferences perfectly. On the left of the phone, we have the same dedicated hardware key that used to plug straight into MotoAI. However, I discovered on this phone part-way through my review that MotoAI is now Qira! Apparently it's pronounced "Keira" (as in Knightley). It's a unified rebranding that Lenovo and Motorola are rolling out across their whole ecosystem. This is essentially the same suite, but merged to keep track of notifications, drafts and context across Motorola phones and Lenovo laptops or tablets. Tools like Catch Me Up and Pay Attention remain intact, but live under the Qira branding. As discussed recently on the podcast, Lenovorola are trying as hard as all the others to get people locked into their world, which is fair enough if everyone else is doing it!

We also have a newer version of Moto's HelloUI with a few modernisations, most notably their Live Updates system. Motorola utilises Android's status bar pill/bubble notification framework next to the camera cut-out. Whenever a supported app runs a background process like media playback, timers, active calls or navigation, Hello UI pulls that metadata into a compact pill. A single tap expands it into a floating quick-control card right over whatever app you're in, while a long-press opens the host app directly. Because what shows in that status bar bubble on the inner screen directly mirrors how Live Activities behave on the external display, it keeps active tasks visible without taking up space in the primary notification shade. You can tweak or turn off specific app bubbles under Settings > Notifications > Live Updates > Status Bar. It’s one of those quiet software refinements that doesn't always show up on a spec sheet, but visually makes the 70 Ultra feel a generation ahead in daily use.

Then there's LOFIC! While the 60 has 50MP main camera sensors too, the 70 Ultra moves to a Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor sensor structure. This isn't just a MP numbers game, but genuinely improves things, allowing highlight handling without blowing out bright skies in high-contrast scenes - with Moto claiming up to 6x dynamic range performance. Even for a person like me who doesn't understand digital photography much, it’s noticeable over the 60 Ultra in tough lighting. The new camera tools and cover-screen gestures, including Tilt to Zoom (one-handed camera control when folded) and Frame Match, enable neat usability improvements. My Phones Show Chat podcast co-host Joe Hickey is much more up on cameras and photography and will be covering all this in video format over on his YouTube channel.

Turning to the built-in speakers, I was expecting the worst, as others were reporting a drop in quality, bass and loudness. I absolutely do not find this to be the case. The new Razr 70 Ultra sounds louder than my 60, and I detect no negative difference in tone, bass, richness or quality using identical Dolby Atmos settings across YouTube Music and my own 320kbps MP3 files. Motorola frequently tweaks default Dolby Atmos spatial profiles and gain control via software updates, so perhaps recent updates resolved earlier complaints. Sounds great to me!

Talking of speakers, Moto UK PR also sent me over a pair of the new Moto Sound Flow speakers (£179 each). At the outset, I'd suggest heading for the online manual and following the steps very carefully! The speaker features a twill-textured fabric around the outside, giving it a lovely feel with some heft at 581g, accompanied by an IP67 rating. As a single standalone unit connected via standard Bluetooth, it delivers 30W of output (10W tweeter, 20W woofer, dual passive radiators) tuned by Bose. Classical music, orchestral, solo piano and jazz sound quite superb, with plenty of volume on tap.

In the box you get a delightful disk-shaped desktop dock with pogo pins providing 15W of power via USB-C, alongside an extra USB-C port on the speaker itself for direct charging. The 6,000mAh battery is rated for up to 12 hours off-base, though in my tests at 33% volume it lost about 5% per hour, meaning 20 hours is achievable at lower volumes. The top controls feature a illuminated Moto 'M' logo that handles play/pause, pairing, and call management, flanked by volume buttons, a microphone mute switch and a light ring that indicates status and volume levels in various colours. Downloading the Moto Sound Flow App gives you EQ controls, battery monitoring and unlocks Wi-Fi/UWB playback.

When you fire up a second speaker and pair them with a compatible UWB-enabled phone like the Razr 70 Ultra, you unlock some unique spatial features. Dynamic Stereo uses UWB to track your phone's physical position in 3D space between the two speakers, micro-adjusting phase, balance and spatial delay so the virtual soundstage centre stays pinned directly in front of you as you walk around the room. Room Shift allows audio to automatically hand off to whichever speaker you are closest to if placed in different rooms, while Proximity Handoff transfers audio directly from your phone or Moto Buds when brought near a speaker.

To test this, place the speakers about 7ft apart facing into the room, open the app, create a 'Stereo Pair' and toggle Dynamic Stereo on. Standing 5 or 6ft back, you hear the singer's voice right in the middle. As you walk toward the left speaker, instead of the sound collapsing into that single channel, the UWB chip detects your movement and adjusts timing so the soundstage remains floating directly in front of your face. It tricks your ears into perceiving that the main channel stays centred wherever you stand - a subtle, acoustic transparency trick rather than a flashy gimmick.

There are, however, a few ecosystem and software caveats worth noting. Firstly, while devices like my original Pixel Fold have a physical UWB radio, Motorola’s Dynamic Stereo and Room Shift rely on proprietary code built into Moto's firmware. Connecting a non-Moto UWB phone still delivers rich Wi-Fi/Bluetooth stereo playback, but omits the dynamic spatial tracking. Secondly, the setup process inside the app requires patience. It operates as a bit of a black box with long, uninformative pauses between steps where users might assume it has frozen. My advice is to get one speaker set up, turn it off, pair the second individually, turn both back on and then create the Stereo Pair in the app.

Furthermore, there is an Android media routing quirk when playing audio across the room. If you tap the Quick Settings media card to switch audio back to "This Device" and stop playing music for 30 minutes, Android clears the temporary override. The next time you hit play, Android sees the active Bluetooth standby link and routes your audio right back out to the speakers in the other room! To reliably break the hold, you need to quickly toggle Bluetooth off and on, or explicitly disconnect via the main Bluetooth settings menu.

These software quirks aside - which Moto will undoubtedly refine through firmware updates - the Sound Flow speakers sound fantastic, and the Wi-Fi streaming integration means incoming phone calls stay on your phone without interrupting music playing for everyone else in the room.

Ultimately, the Motorola Razr 70 Ultra isn't a radical redesign, nor did it need to be. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Motorola took the best flip-phone layout on the market and refined the remaining trade-offs: battery life is noticeably better, outdoor screen legibility is improved and the LOFIC camera sensor addresses high-contrast dynamic range limitations. While Razr 60 Ultra owners might not need to jump immediately unless they specifically want the Alcantara finish or LOFIC camera, the Razr 70 Ultra comfortably holds the crown as the most complete, powerhouse flip-foldable on the market today. If you like the flip-phone form factor, you'll love this - it's best in class and is not bogged down by too much OEM bloat, like many others in the space.

1,000th Blog Post! The Salmon of Salmagundi!

When I first started writing here (and porting my posts over from Google+ when it closed its doors in 2018), I didn’t set out with a grand plan to get to any particular number - I just ploughed on through when the urge took me and I felt as though I had something to say! There was no calendar, no strategy and certainly no counter running!

I just wanted a space to put thoughts down, tinker with things that interested me and share whatever happened to be occupying my time. Today, this post happens to be number 1,000. If you didn't know, a salmagundi, by definition, is a miscellany - a dish composed of many disparate ingredients mixed together. Looking back across the archive, the blog has certainly lived up to its name. Its name and mine! The Salmon of Salmagundi! I don't have an exact record of when I posted my first post in Google+ but it's now well over 10 years - and possibly 15 - ported across here in the summer of 2018.

If you were to lay out every entry side-by-side, it would look less like a single publication and more like the top of a well-used workbench! A large chunk of those thousand posts has been dedicated to hardware - mobile phones, foldables, e-ink tablets, custom ROMs, obscure gadgets and the endless pursuit of the setup that actually works! We’ve seen the smartphone market evolve from quirky, experimental form factors into polished slabs of glass, only to bend and fold themselves into new shapes all over again. I’ve always found as much enjoyment in taking software apart or tweaking a niche budget device as I have in unboxing a flagship. For every review of a polished mainstream phone, there’s been an entry dedicated to coaxing a few more years of life out of a classic piece of kit, swapping operating systems or testing whether a paper-like screen really lives up to the hype.

Then there is the music. If tech represents the modern, restless itch to see what’s coming next, the music posts have always been about slowing down. Dropping the stylus onto a vinyl record forces a different kind of attention. Over the years, I’ve used these pages to talk through album pressings, soundscapes, audio gear and the sheer tactile satisfaction of physical media. Whether dissecting the production details on a classic album or detailing a pre-amp tweak, those posts have always felt like taking a break from the noise of the digital world to just sit back and listen. My real enjoyment has come from the resurgence of vinyl LPs though and I've had great fun over the years re-collecting what was lost from back in the day - and sharing that nostalgia here.

And, of course, the films and television. My reviews here have never been about chasing whatever blockbuster is currently dominating the multiplex. Instead, Salmagundi has been a place for digging into the side alleys of cinema - indie thrillers, oddball horror, European cinema, lost sci-fi gems and the occasional film that left me wondering what on earth the director was thinking! Writing about film is always a nice counterweight to tech hardware. A phone is measured in gigabytes, battery cycles and refresh rates; a film is measured by whether it kept you gripped for ninety minutes or made you want to drop a brief, honest summary onto the blog the moment the credits rolled. I also, now and again, add a guest review from one of our community pals, who have penned a review of their own and want somewhere online to post it.

Between the major categories lie the posts that don't fit anywhere else - the odd tools, the desk arrangements, the podcast companion notes for Whatever Works and the small observations on day-to-day projects. Those are often the most fun to write. They capture the immediate moment: fixing a piece of audio kit, setting up a new workflow or simply sharing a thought that didn't belong in a formal show recording. And speaking of podcasts, I always publish a list each month here in my blog of what the team and I have been recording and getting out there into podcast land. More spicy ingredients for that Salmagundi!

Reaching 1,000 posts isn't a finish line; it’s just a nice milestone on the road. The core appeal of running a blog like this hasn't changed since post No. 1. It remains a personal, independent corner of the web - free from algorithms dictating what ought to be written and driven entirely by genuine curiosity. To anyone who has dropped by to read a single review, leave a comment, agree or disagree with a film take, or follow along through the podcasts: thank you for your interest and support. Here’s to the next batch of tech, vinyl, films and whatever else happens to land on the desk next week!

Most of what I write here ends up in our MeWe Social Groups as well, so do check those out via the links here on my blog - and feel free to tune into any of our audio podcasts that takes your fancy. We always have a lot of fun, whatever the topic, and you'll be welcome along.

The Smartwatch Cable Chaos: Why Is It Time for a Universal Standard?

In late 2024, the European Union implemented a landmark directive mandating USB Type-C as the universal charging standard for portable electronic devices. Designed to curb electronic waste and spare consumers the financial burden of proprietary accessories, the legislation successfully streamlined mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, and digital cameras under a single cable standard. Yet, if you look at your bedside table or travel bag, one glaring exception remains: smartwatches.

Anyone who has owned a succession of wearables—or even multiple devices from a single brand like Motorola, Fitbit, or Samsung—will be familiar with the frustration. A drawer filled with ten visually similar yet functionally incompatible magnetic pucks, multi-pin cradles, and proprietary docks is an all-too-common reality. Even within the same manufacturer’s portfolio, successive generations often abandon previous charging designs. Why, then, were smartwatches excluded from the EU’s universal charging mandate, and isn't it high time regulatory frameworks addressed this oversight?

The exclusion of smartwatches from early regulatory drafts stems largely from physical and technological constraints. Under EU Directive 2022/2380, devices were required to incorporate a physical USB-C female port if their dimensions permitted. Given the compact chassis of a typical wrist-worn device, embedding a standard USB-C port presents significant design challenges. It compromises ingress protection against water and dust, demands precious internal space that would otherwise house battery capacity or health sensors, and introduces ergonomic issues on a surface meant to sit flush against human skin.

However, exempting wearables from a physical USB-C port should not mean granting tech manufacturers carte blanche to proliferate proprietary cables indefinitely. The core philosophy of the EU’s mandate was environmental sustainability and consumer convenience. By allowing every smartwatch generation to ship with a bespoke charging cradle, the industry continues to generate thousands of tonnes of redundant plastic and copper wire—defeating the very spirit of anti-e-waste legislation.

A sensible solution exists, and it does not require forcing a bulky USB-C port onto delicate watch cases. Regulators ought to turn their attention towards standardising the wireless or magnetic interface itself. Qi wireless charging is already an open, international standard used widely across smartphones and earbud cases. While traditional Qi coils can be large, refined micro-Qi standards or unified magnetic alignment protocols could easily be mandated for wrist-worn tech. Alternatively, enforcing cross-brand compatibility for the charger-to-watch interface would mark a massive step forward.

As wearable technology matures from a novelty into an essential daily utility, the current status quo is simply unacceptable. Consumers should not be forced to buy a new proprietary cable every time they upgrade their watch, nor should the environment pay the price for corporate stubbornness. It is undeniably time for lawmakers to extend universal charging regulations to smartwatches, ending the cable chaos once and for all.

Moto Watch (2026)

My favourite 'smart' watch of the moment, and for many months now, is the Moto Watch Fit. I love how slim and sleek it is on my wrist, and the oblong shape maximises the amount of information and the easy-view aspects of it for me. I do understand why some will prefer the more traditional 'round' watch, though, even if it loses, by definition, some of the above. So when MotoPR sent over the 2026 Moto Watch, I wasn't convinced that I'd be looking to switch. But we'll see!

First things first: here is a link to my review of the Moto Watch Fit so you can click through and grab the context. Neither of these are WearOS watches, but, as I say over there, this certainly has some advantages. It's nicely boxed in Moto's now-usual white eco-friendly cardboard, and inside this £130 edition you get a Matte Silver watch, a charging pad for the back of the watch which has a USB-C plug on the end of a short cable, a silver stainless steel bracelet and a second, silicone strap in Pantone's Herbal Garden colour - which is a kind of lime green. There's also a vice/clamp thingie which enables the user to remove links from the steel bracelet if it's too long. No additional links are supplied, but it's quite long; most people won't need more, I guess. I didn't need to take any out, but I have huge wrists! The good thing about the strap/band system here is that it uses standard 22mm pins, so for those of us who don't fancy either of the supplied options, we can use our own preferred strap. Which I have done!

You can buy the black version of the watch - Pantone's Volcanic Ash - with just a matching colour strap and no steel bracelet, reducing the package to £89. I have to be honest and say that if I were buying one, I'd have gone the cheaper, black way - but my Phones Show Chat co-host Joe Hickey loves the silver one and the all-macho steel-linked bracelet! Each to their own, I guess, and it's great to have the choice. The round face and steel bracelet certainly make the watch feel much more like a 'traditional' one over the Watch Fit style. I'm trying hard to like it rather than my favourite Watch Fit - not helped by the arrival of the Pebble Time 2! So many options! I have reviewed the Pebble Time 2 here on my blog, incidentally, but that's a very different beast.

So yes, the Moto Watch is traditional, chunky and circular. It features a large 47mm sandblasted aluminium case with a rotating crown and a physical button on the right side. It is basically a classic chronograph-style watch. Whereas, the Moto Watch Fit is sleek and rectangular, using a smaller 44.5mm x 38mm aluminium alloy case with just a single physical button. It is built for a more understated, sporty look. The circular Moto Watch is heavier at around 40g (though closer to 35g without that steel strap), while the Watch Fit is incredibly light at just 25g - you don't know it's there! The Moto Watch has a 1.43" circular OLED display covered in Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a stylised, non-rotating (and certainly not functional in any way) fairly wide 'bezel' around the circumference. You don't get that with the Watch Fit, so consequently, you are able to see more screen in terms of overall area. Both watches have an Always-on Display with lots of colours and great brightness (over 1,000 nits), but the Watch Fit's larger 1.9" rectangular OLED screen (also Gorilla Glass 3) with its 348 x 442 resolution seems clearer to me - probably because of the shape - and the AoD options just seem to fill more of the panel.

Both the Moto watches operate under their lightweight RTOS software rather than having a shot at Google's WearOS, but they're keeping things relatively simple - and making battery life so much better. These are for a different kind of user who doesn't need to be deep-diving into the complexities of WearOS. As I said in my Watch Fit review, it's neat, refreshing and, I contend, for most people, is all they need. Gym-going, workout-centric exercise folk will likely be best served elsewhere, though to be fair, Moto has stuffed in meaningful data syncing and lots of workout/exercise options here too, with this new watch, in partnership with Polar's health suite.

Polar's health suite includes advanced insights like Nightly Recharge Status and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) tracking. For runners, it features upgraded dual-frequency (L1/L5) GPS for much tighter accuracy around buildings or heavy tree cover. Whereas, the Moto Watch Fit uses a standard, proprietary optical sensor stack for heart rate and stress data. While it still tracks over 100 sports modes and includes automatic walking/running detection, it relies on standard single-band GPS. It lacks the deep, algorithmic data recovery and sleep coaching metrics provided by the Polar engine on this new watch.

Neither of these watches will replace a full Wear OS device, meaning no Google Wallet/NFC payments and no app store; however, their hardware differs considerably. The new one has 512MB RAM and 4GB of eMMC storage, which allows you to sideload up to 150 songs for local, phone-free playback via Bluetooth headphones. It features a built-in microphone and speaker, enabling Bluetooth calling directly from the wrist. It also has a barometer and an altimeter. If paired with a recent Moto phone supporting MotoAI, both watches get 'catch-me-up' type summaries and services. The Moto Watch Fit has unspecified storage, so no local music saving. It doesn't have a loudspeaker or microphone either, meaning it cannot handle phone calls. It's more of a notification pass-through device that controls your phone's media playback, sets timers and pushes phone alerts. It's worth mentioning that both watches can be happily paired up with any Android or iOS phone via Moto's app and everything works perfectly well - except for that one exclusive MotoAI feature that requires an Android Moto phone with MotoAI onboard.

Battery life on both watches is excellent, not being bogged down by WearOS or the like. The new watch is supposed to run for 13 days with basic use. In real-world testing with the Always-On Display enabled, I'm getting 5–7 days. On the Watch Fit, yes, more than that, but not much more. As always, it depends on how you use them - playing music on the new version is certainly a battery-draining activity! The new one features fast charging that supposedly gives a "day's worth" of power in about 5 minutes (perfect for forgetful people rushing out the door), with a full 0–100% charge taking about an hour and a half. The Moto Watch Fit has a more impressive baseline of 16 days of battery, but, as I imply above, it's more like 7–10 for me.

The Moto Watch (2026) is built for the user who wants a traditional, premium-looking timepiece. The addition of local music storage, wrist calling, dual-frequency GPS and Polar's recovery algorithms make it a vastly superior hardware package, despite the bulkier 47mm size. The Moto Watch Fit is a pure, lightweight fitness band masquerading as a smartwatch. It wins on screen brightness (1,000 nits is excellent for outdoor use), waterproofing (5 ATM vs 1 ATM), and wrist comfort, but it lacks the audio, calling and advanced tracking depth of its round sibling. That 1 ATM rating is a point to note for fitness users, as it effectively means "rain and splashes only". So while the new watch has better tracking (Polar), it is actually less suited for swimmers or people jumping into showers than the Watch Fit!

The app on the phone is fairly simple and straightforward. If you make a Moto account you can back up your data to their cloud and then restore it to another watch if switching to a new phone. One thing I found, though, is that you can't switch the data between different watches. So, a backup of the Watch Fit will not be available on the next phone if trying to pair up with the new Moto Watch, and vice-versa. The data is all locked into one watch model. But beyond that, the back up/restore works perfectly well and is quick to execute, unlike WearOS sometimes! The graphs and charts on the app are simple and easy to read, but many of them can also be seen on the watches too. They aren't as clear, obviously, as they are much smaller - but data can be viewed if needed.

As I said at the outset, my heart still belongs to the Moto Watch Fit. For my 63-year-old eyes, that larger, rectangular screen is just so much easier to see at a glance. Plus, at a featherweight 25g, I completely forget I'm wearing it, and the superior 5 ATM waterproofing means it survives the daily routine without a second thought. But I cannot deny the sheer hardware value Motorola has stuffed into this new 2026 Moto Watch either. For £130 (or an absolute steal at £89 for the black version), you're getting dual-band GPS, local music storage, wrist calling and those genuinely excellent Polar health algorithms. If you're a casual runner, or simply someone who prefers their tech to look and feel like a proper, traditional chronograph, this is a big step up from the Watch Fit.

Just remember the trade-offs - you are sacrificing decent water resistance, losing a bit of screen space to the circular form factor, and gaining a noticeably chunkier device. However, by swerving the battery-draining bloat of WearOS, both of these watches offer a wonderfully refreshing, multi-day alternative to the mainstream smartwatch market.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you want strapped to your arm. A sporty, invisible notification screen? Stick with the Watch Fit. A handsome, feature-rich timepiece that won't die before bedtime? The 2026 Moto Watch is a superb option. As Joe would undoubtedly agree, each to their own!

The Killer Feature

Do you ever use a piece of gear that really doesn't tick enough boxes for you to want to use, but has that one feature that you can't get anywhere else which just draws you in?! Now Playing on Pixels comes to mind. But this week's focus seems to be on the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra here and, most importantly, it's really very good and usable speaker output for playing music on-the-go, on-the-wrist. Hear me out...

Yeah, I know, you're likely to have your phone with you anyway, so what's the point you might ask, but it makes for a fun gadget and I do use it (when I'm in Samsung Mode)! Wandering around the house, putting the kettle on, popping to the lav, cooking - 101 ways - and it's always with you, always rolling, without having to plug your ears up with buds, isolated from the world. The sound from it is certainly loud enough for the above-mentioned activities - and there's a little bit of bass, but perfectly good enough for casual listening. At least, for me. And I don't know of another watch that has/does this.

You do need a Samsung Galaxy Phone to service it, mind you. You can, kind of cludge it on with a non-Galaxy phone, but it's sweet with one. Inside the Wearable app, head for Manage Content and you can see that there's an option to Auto sync which refreshes the tracks from whatever is on the phone's playlists, what looks like randomly. So I asked Gemma!

"When you select a playlist or a general pool of music to sync, the Galaxy Wearable app doesn't treat the source as a massive bucket of individual, isolated files to random-sample one by one. Instead, it respects the structural metadata of how that music was ingested or grouped on your phone (often relying on the Samsung Music app or Android's media store database). If your 4,000-track pool is comprised of albums that are technically cataloged as playlists, or if the auto-sync logic decides to grab a recently added or most played group, it will pull down the entire cohesive unit (the album) to ensure playback continuity on the watch. To optimise battery and storage, the background process prefers doing a single, sequential block transfer of a folder/album rather than constantly querying the storage database for 15 or 20 distinct, scattered audio files. It essentially picks a starting point - often an album or a specific sub-folder - and syncs the entire block until it reaches its self-imposed limit for that specific sync cycle. So the process is pseudo-random at best. It usually prioritises tracks or albums added to the phone recently and content you listen to frequently on the phone. It might just be traversing your 4,000-track directory sequentially from a random starting index, meaning it hits Album A, grabs all its tracks because they are contiguous in the database and then stops when the sync quota is filled. If you want a truly mixed selection on your Galaxy Watch Ultra rather than full albums taking up space, the auto-sync toggle isn't smart enough to shuffle-pick for you. Best workarounds are to create a dedicated, say, Watch Shuffle Playlist on your phone, create a static or dynamic playlist of, say, 200 tracks that you manually shuffle or refresh. In the Wearable app, uncheck the massive 4,000-track pool and only check this specific playlist then turn off Auto Sync. It's a bit more old school granular file management, but it ensures exactly what you want on the storage is what stays there." (Course, she could be talking bollox!)

My Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra has 32GB of storage and she reckons that about half of that will be available for my media, so given the average size of an mp3 track, possibly up to 2,000 files are possible to make it across.

It's not going to work terribly well without it being paired to a Samsung phone, as I say. It will do the sync and stay on the watch even if the Samsung phone is then turned off, but if you pair the watch with another phone, it's all gone. So you have a watch on your wrist which isn't terribly functional but is at least a strap-on mini Bluetooth speaker of sorts! So yes, a feature best used within Samsung's ecosystem of course. And some people won't feel the need or desire - or get the kick - out of it doing this on the wrist and will argue that there are better solutions - the simple one, to use the phone - but I like it very much and, as I say, for my purposes, the output is good enough. In fact, remarkably good.

I did notice that there was missing album artwork and so went on a long, slow and winding quest to fix that - and did in the end by embedding jpg images using the open source Album Art Downloader, checked and fixed by Mp3tag, both for Windows. I saved them to my master files on my PC then re-sync'd them to the phone, then the next time it synced to the watch they appeared! More old-school file management. It would be nice if the Samsung phone could do that all for me by flying off like PowerAmp does, collecting the images and plonking them in. Even PowerAmp doesn't seem to make them available system-wide for other apps, writing them to the files, so I've done it long-hand! Feel free to pipe up and tell me what a fool I've been and highlight a simper way! It's all good fun though, pretending it's 1998 again!

Anyway, that's my Killer Feature item which often throws the toggle for me to meander my way back to Samsung (in my case). What's your Killer Feature that pulls you back in somewhere, regardless of other compromises?

Pebble Time 2 (2026)

If you remember the original Pebble Watch from a decade ago, getting your hands on this new Pebble Time 2 (released via the rePebble/Core Devices reboot) will feel like a massive hit of tech nostalgia - but with a modernised hard/software experience. It uses Pebble’s e-paper display (a reflective kind of LCD). Specifically, a 1.5" 64-colour e-paper touchscreen with a flat Gorilla Glass front glass. It is optically bonded to reduce distracting reflections, meaning the brighter the sunlight outside, the easier it is to read - kinda like a Kindle!

The build quality is a big step up from the plastic, blocky steel Pebbles of old. It apparently features a CNC-milled 316L stainless steel case with a hardened, ceramic-like PVD coating! The buttons are also stainless steel with a nice, tactile cross-hatch texture. The big and chunky bezels from the 2015 era are gone and the screen fills the watch face to the edges nearly. On the back, we have various sensors, confirmation that it was made in China and also that it's water resistant to 30M.

It's certainly a small watch and (dare I say) might suit someone with femininity about them or a child - but certainly someone without huge limbs like me! But I could get used to it. I currently favour my Moto Watch Fit because it's slim and (what I thought) small, but this is even smaller. I do like the oblong shape of it (over a round watch) as it just makes more sense for those who can get away from a 'clock' needing to be traditionally 'round'. You can get much more data onto it and see things more clearly.

In the box, you get the watch and a little charging 'puck'. It connects to the back of the watch with magnets and pogo-pins. On the other end of it there's a USB-C port, so plug in a charger that you already have as there's not one supplied here. The box is a simple affair, reminding me very much of a Sony Xperia one - white cardboardy stuff which fits into a paper-like sheath sliding over it lengthways.

In a separate box (maybe it will be included in the same one when this gets to mainstream retail) there's a strap which appears to be made from that nasty silicone material, which I find slippery and irritating to my skin, but each to their own! It's a two-part strap with a choice of two lengths for different size wrists, so three-part really! Fortunately, the watch takes standard 22mm pins at either side, so, if you're like me, you can ignore that thing anyway and put your own quick-release strap on made of what you like!

The watch has three buttons on the right, running top-to-bottom and one on the left, very nearly at the top. The one on the left seems to act as a back-to-base button whatever the watch is doing and the three on the right, for navigating menus - top-up, bottom-down and middle-select/OK. The maximum amount of time you can set the blue-like backlight to stay on for (with no activity) is 8 seconds. I do think that could be longer, given that the battery life is clearly going to be super. I'd settle for about double that. You can set it to tap (or double-tap) or move to wake (for those 8 seconds again) though the 'move' is actually more like a 'shake' to get it to work (double twist like Moto's flashlight)! Update - see Shane Craig's video linked below for a geeky workaround to fix this. You can also assign long-presses on the right-side buttons to execute a number of functions.

The screen is much like you'd expect an e-paper screen to look like, really. Very much like any e-ink/paper screen and has the feel of such (not physical, it's just glass, but the style). The blue 'glow' when backlight is active is a lovely 'Pebble' thing which is very attractive. It is a colour screen, as I said above, with 64 of them! Most of them are 'muted' though - again, very much as you'd expect from the modern trend of OEMs having put colour into e-book readers and tablets these days - people want colour! It's also fair to say that if you're dwelling in the shadows indoors, you'll probably not be able to see what's on the screen - but in every other situation, outdoors for sure, but also under any kind of lighting, the more, the brighter it'll be for you!

First thing to do is to download the Pebble app and pair the watch up to your phone by Bluetooth, which was a simple affair here. For those who can't type and search in the Play Store, there's even a QR Code on the outside of the box which you can get your phone to scan! Open up the app and explore the very old-fashioned, retro-feeling software UI. It reminds me very much of what Nothing Phone are doing in many respects, even utilising the orange/black/white accents throughout.

You're invited to add some watchfaces from a few options and similarly, some apps - Compass, Stopwatch, Obilisk (game), Timer and Home Assistant have been picked for the initial intro. You can also here add a Language Pack to ensure that everything is localised. It seems to default to USA English (but of course!) but I was able to change it to English (general), whatever difference that makes!

You're then led through the setting of some basic options like 12/24hr clock, Enable Health Tracking and Heart Rate Monitor as well as how often various functions will 'sample' the biometric data. Activity Insights, Sleep Insights, a switch for Imperial Units and setting of age, height and weight. You can allow it to talk to "your phone's health platform" or not, so I said OK (and gave permissions) for the new-look Google Health and Offline/cloud Speech Recognition - so I guess one can talk to the watch, which I hope to explore the parameters of later.

We're then offered an App Homepage with two main 'tabs' for Faces and Apps. Faces is the landing page of the two and offers a horizontal list of My Watchfaces (ones that you've downloaded and used/tried) then a link out to the Pebble App Store with thousands more! Some of which are paid-for, bought via the Play Store. The Apps 'tab' is much the same but for Apps, obviously, instead of Watchfaces! One thing to note is that you can filter the options via a button at the top, to only show Watchfaces and Apps that have specifically been designed for the new era of Pebble. Leave it unselected, and you get all the historic ones too, which they say still work fine.

Down the bottom of the page, we have Devices (a list of connected-to-phone devices), Health - with a basic overview of collected data, graphs and charts, by the day, week or month, Notifications - which is basically a clone of Android's Notification History, with toggle-controls to turn any one (or all) of them off, mute them, and a list of contacts - which can 'allow through' (or not) one-by-one. Lastly, there's Settings, which, as you'd expect, allows for a detailed drill-down of all sorts of settings and adjustments for the app and watch. I shall highlight some of these as I go rather than hope to cover each one!

I like the Battery data - again, graphically presented with pie charts and options and all sorts - very nerdy/geeky which many will find fun and informative. General permissions throughout of course, keeping your data under your control, but also the ability to open things up to the default Calendar data that the phone has access to. Then there's that aforementioned Speech Recognition, inside which you can opt for Cloud only, Local only, Cloud with Local fallback or Local with Cloud fall back! This service is apparently provided by Wispr Flow. There's Weather data controls, though I'm not sure where it comes from (or perhaps it uses one's default data of what the phone is using). Anyway, yes, loads of settings to tinker with.

Physically then, on the back there's a heart rate monitor, a compass sensor and that basic step/sleep tracking via Pebble Health (shared with your default Heath App if you want it to). The watch features a speaker and dual microphones (the second mic is intended for environmental noise cancellation) that benefit from that 30M water resistance and a new linear, resonant actuator provides a much tighter, quieter and premium vibration alert than those buzzy motors of old.

Because this is a community-driven, independent reboot under the open-source PebbleOS, there are a few crucial nuances. The hardware is apparently engineered to hit a huge 4-week (30-day) battery life. However, it looks like from those already using it with the current early software builds, real-world usage is averaging around 14 to 18 days. That is still oodles better than most, but yes, further power optimisations are still being pushed out via OTA updates (via the App of course).

Some hardware features are physically present but not fully enabled in the software yet. For instance, the second microphone's noise cancellation and advanced speaker functionalities (like reading text aloud or custom developer tones) are still being ironed out in the firmware. It is a touchscreen, but right now the OS relies almost entirely on the 4-button layout (one on the left, three on the right). Currently, the touchscreen's primary function seems to be to tap it for that backlight.

As I hinted above, the watch launches with out-of-the-box compatibility for the entire legacy catalogue of 10,000+ existing Pebble apps and watchfaces via the rePebble platform, and CloudPebble is officially back for JavaScript developers. The founder, Eric Migicovsky, has noted that due to OS restrictions, Android users will get far more functionality out of the watch (like actionable notification replies and deep system integration) compared to iPhone users.

Delightfully (but basically) Pebble have made the App Store available online too, for browsers - which is great! Everyone should do this so it can be accessed on a big screen for workflows and easier viewing other than just mobile (or watch)! You can sign in with the same account established on the watch/mobile app and jump between Watchfaces and Apps. It's very barebones, but the whole catalogue is available, with a good search facility. You can select Watchfaces and Apps then 'send' them to the App and watch (presumably relying on being signed into the same account)! It all works really quickly, select something new, click on it, then nano-seconds later it arrives on not only the phone's app but also the watch! In fact, all the actions and communications work instantly and perfectly between my test devices here and the app/watch. Impressive and a sign of mature Bluetooth coding, I guess.

I downloaded a Mini-Golf app which works with the touchscreen too, thus proving that developers are working to make the touch experience more useful. I guess that Pebble themselves will in time start adding that functionality if it's clearly something that indie developers can do readily. Incidentally, you'd need very sharp eyesight in order to play this game! Obviously the screen is very small and yes, my 63-year-old eyes don't make that an experience I'd want to continue for more than a few minutes to see it working!

The search engine produces a stunning array of options, more than often. As an example, I searched for "Casio" and got a bunch of, sure-enough, Casio watch retro faces. But more interestingly, I tried "Bowie" and sure enough people, presumably fans, have put together various watchfaces with David Bowie AlbumArt, icons and more. So it's either pretty easy to code for this or there's a dedicated-to-Pebble bunch of clever geeks out there. I'll see if I can find out! Here, I find the Pebble Developer Website with all sorts of options to get started by getting the SDK, via PebbleCloud, build with JavaScript or C with all sorts of open source guides, examples, Blog and (clearly) a dedicated community. How hard can it be, I wonder! An exploration project for a rainy day.

So now, in practice - minute-by-minute use. You should be aware that I’m no gym-dweller, nor exercise freak, so most of what I’ll be testing will be the stuff I use (and will leave those who know about higher-end health antics to their reviews). Not saying that I won’t touch on it - I do steps and can work through the sleep stuff, but don’t expect me to be abseiling!

First up, the battery life. And testing so far pretty much upholds Pebble’s claims I think. I’ve had it connected to my phone now for 4 days and the charged-up battery is still showing 92% remaining. The display not being ‘always on’ clearly helps with this (and I always select that on any watch I use if I can) but don’t forget that it’s e-paper too, sipping at the power - and one could argue that the display is always-on, rather than always lit. So in most ordinary daylight (or artificial lighting) situations one can expect to be able to see it well enough to make out what it says. Again, think Kindle. Sitting in bed at night with no lights on, a Kindle needs a light of some sort, build-in or not. Same here. Fortunately, a light is a tap (or two) away if it really is that dark around you. Update after a week and, the way I'm using it, I'm getting 50% left, so it looks like (for me) it's a 2-week battery life. But, as I say, for those less cavalier with functions, they might get further towards the ultimate Pebble claim of a month. Interestingly, I watched a YouTube Video by friend of our Phones Show Chat podcast, Shane Craig - Pebble Time 2 Review: Perfectly Imperfect - which is a really useful 22-minute dive into so much of this stuff. He concludes that, for him, it's also a 2-week battery.

When notifications arrive, they seem to come onto the screen, the screen lights up (for, in my case, 8 seconds), then stay there until you do something about it. I’m OK with this, though as Craig points out, some joined up thinking about dismissing them with the phone (and vice-versa) needs attention from Pebble. If you press the middle-right button, 'OK' we’ll call it, you get a bunch of options pop up - dismiss, reply (using voice - which works really well), open on phone, mute the source of the notification (temporarily or for good) or start Quiet Time. This is basically a stop-notifications option which can, yes, be actioned here, but also in settings (on the watch or phone’s app). You can up/down through the options with the up/down buttons, the OK button to execute.

Back on the homescreen, if you press the 'up' button, you get a page telling me how many steps you've done today, then up again for current heart rate, then up again for sleep data overview. For any one of these you can then press the OK button for a deeper dive - then top-left button to step-back. Back to the homescreen and 'down' button, it gives me a list of my appointments for the day and two more, press again to get more if there are too many, with weather and sun-up, sun-down data interspersed.

Back again to the homescreen and press the OK button, which lands me in the list of system-type options, so Settings, Music, Notifications, Alarms, Weather, Health, Workout, Watchfaces, Timeline (list of Calendar events) and then any apps that are installed. So they can be launched from here via the OK button and each has drilled-down options. In Settings, we have Bluetooth, Notifications, Sounds and Haptics, the aforementioned Quiet Time, Timeline, Quick Launch, Time and date, Display, Health, Background App and System. Under System we have Information, certification, standby mode, debugging, shut down and factory reset. Phew! And inside all those, there’s plenty more for the curious!

The haptics are not bad - a little buzz on the wrist which I’m sure most people would be happy with - it can be set to low/high (or off), you can change the size of the on-screen text too, though I think that the default is a good balance between size and amount of scrolling needed. One of the good things about the forthcoming touch-screen expansion will be not having to reach around to the left side to go back, which is a bit cumbersome. I guess you could wear the watch on the right wrist, but then it would be even worse to access all 3 right-side buttons. Hopefully someone at Pebble is coding a 'Back' button for the screen somehow as I type! Or maybe one of these clever developer bods have already done it!

The Music app/function is nifty - not for playing music on the watch’s speaker like a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra - but for direct control of the last-used Music app on the phone. You get a little red progress bar, cute icon of a cassette tape, name of artist and track title, then on the right, aligned with the three buttons, next track (bottom), previous track (top), three dots on the OK button - press it and you get a play/pause pop up for that OK button and the next/previous track buttons turn into volume up/down. It’s been very nicely thought out and works brilliantly well. Only thing missing for my pleasure is AlbumArt! A step too far maybe, but who knows, being open to developers. The use of colours throughout seems quite sparse for/with the built-in apps, but yes, they pop up now and again - as I said above, kind of muted because of e-ink, but that’s fine. That little golf app I downloaded and installed certainly looked very green for the grass, so it shows that with careful testing in development the colours can be more impactful.

Still exploring, but for now, that's it! I shall come back after a while if I can add anything. Certainly keeping an eye open for more touch adjustment - it'll no doubt come soon as updates fly in thick and fast, sometimes daily! It feels much more like a fun gadget than anything that's going to challenge WearOS or the like anytime soon! It leaves deep sports analysis alone and trades it for a charming, fun, retro yet premium-feeling device that nerds and geeks will love! The battery life, though maybe not quite what they claim, is still stonkingly good and if you can live with the muted colours and physical buttons, you'll love it.