This week, Google announced MODE snap-and-swap watch bands for Android Wear. Android's slogan is “Be together not the same” so we've really seen Android tout their customizable features these past few months. Not too long the MODE watch bands were announced, Google actually announced Live Cases for the Nexus 6P and the Nexus 5X. Essentially, they're custom cases that you design yourself and they also include their own custom wallpaper to match the case you designed so it's pretty cool. I hope to get one here in the studio very soon.
But MODE is a continuation of Google's attempt to make everyone stand out in a very unique fashion. I do want to point out that the fact that this is not a sponsor by the way. But you can head over to the website and select which Android Wear watch you have and select compatible watch bands for your Android Wear smartwatch. You'll see the band I have in front of me is the 20-mm MODE silicon band in gray that fits the 42mm Moto 360 2nd generation that I have. This band is also compatible with other 22-mm watches like the Pebble Time Round, Samsung Gear S2 Classic (which is pretty neat). I decided to go with the silicon band because I already have a nice leather band which was included in the purchase of the 360 and I do not have a silicon band for working out and I don't really want to workout in a leather band or metal band since that's kind of uncomfortable. And it kind of ruins the leather with all my gross sweat. So I picked up a silicon band.
But if we slice off the top portion of the box and slide off the innards, we'll see the silicon band right here. You'll see that on both bands, we had this little mechanism here that slides up and down to easily attach and detach from the watch pins. Now with your purchase, you will of course find a fancy watch tool and two watch pins. This tool is going to be used more for removing the pins than actually installing the pins but you can use it to install pins of course.
To install the pins, first you need to grab your Android Wear smartwatch of choice. Like I said, I have the 42mm second generation Moto 360. Motorola has actually made it really easy to detach the bands as you just pull down a little lever and pull off each band from the watch face like so. It's really quite simple. Now here's the part where you grab those two little watch pins and be careful not to lose these little suckers as they're prone to being lost. So you could use the tool to insert the pin into the watch face but you really don't need to. The pins can retract on either end. They feature springs to do so. So I just inserted one end on the first and used my fingernail to pry the non-secure end of the pin downwards to attach it into place. As you can see, I don't have very long nails at all and I didn't have much trouble doing it this way but it's totally up to you. I did actually fling one pin across my studio on one attempt though but thankfully I was able to retrieve it.
When you're all done, your watch should look something like this with both pins successfully installed and sturdy. From here, you just grab each watch band and pull down the little switch, clamp it around the pin, slide the switch back up, and it becomes securely fastened. You do that for both bands. It's really that simple, there's not much to it. What's neat is that after you install the mode pins, which is by far the hardest part, you can start to grow your collection of MODE snap-and-swap watch bands.
Once again, I'm going to leave a link in the description for you to further investigate MODE for Android Wear. There are both leather and silicon bands in a multitude of colors. The silicon bands cost about $50 and the leather bands cost about $60 so they're certainly not cheap. I would say that's probably the biggest con of these bands. That and the fact that there are no metal bands. But the bands themselves are made well. They're incredibly easy to install, snap and swap.