Andy Faust, writing for WatchAware, explores the differences between Apple’s square watch face and the Android Wear round design. In a nutshell, Apple got it right. A square display is perfect for scrolling data. No way around it.

But:

Round Android Wear (or other) smartwatches are at an almost complete feature disadvantage to Apple Watch. Except one. Yet if they continue to position their circular screen approach as predicated on traditional analog watch design cues, they’ll never be able to play their sole trump card upon Apple’s (overflowingly) green table. They must get their bearings right and move forward. They must forget the timepiece, and they must embrace the compass.

To understand what I mean, just put on a wristwatch. Now glance down at your wrist, as if checking the time. Don’t exaggerate things — just twist your arm towards yourself in that standard, natural motion you’re used to. More likely than not, you’ll notice that your watch probably isn’t oriented in the easiest-to-read manner. For analog or basic digital affairs, this is hardly a problem, as you’ve long been conditioned to read simple watch displays even when viewed from various off-center positions.

Here’s the kicker:

But the benefit to a circular display is that the entire display can rotate without any data loss — just like the inside of a compass. This means that, once calibrated with your head-level as “north” (you are a star, after all!), the UI will always know where your smartwatch is in relation to your eyeballs. And exactly as a compass always points north, your smartwatch display will always balance itself for maximal viewing, allowing for centered, left-to-right (or right-to-left) reading no matter how off-center your wrist happens to be. No more turning and twisting your head like a chump! (The calibration shouldn’t be complex, either. You’d simply hold the device up to your face in a vertical manner, follow a few prompts to move your arm here and there, and manually make minor adjustments to the amount of display “spin” as needed.)

This is an interesting read, good food for thought.