90 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 50
REVIEW
simple and intuitive. We do like the way recent apps
automatically appear at the top of the list for ease of
repeat access, although it seems counter-intuitive that
they appear below as well; in the photo above you can
see the Alarm app twice within the space of four slots.
Speaking of faces, the way watch face
customization is handled is odd (albeit standard
fare for a Wear OS device). Opening the relevant
section of the settings shows only three; if you tap
through to add more, you find there are really 19, all
accessible without download, hidden in the submenu.
You have to select one of these to add it to the
higher-tier menu – the ‘favourites’ – and then select
again to make it the selection.
You can access even more faces than this, but you
have to download them from the Play Store.Performance
You get the usual range of Wear OS smartwatch
features – music, email and text notifications,
Shazam, Google Assistant – but this is primarily a
fitness device. (To be fair the company’s website
also boasts that the Ticwatch features a vibrator,
but we assume this is a translation issue because
we couldn’t find one in the box.)
With on-board GPS, which the makers boast is
particularly accurate because of its integration into the
strap, our expectations were high. But we found the
device mildly prone to underestimation: a route that a
trusted Apple Watch Series 2 pegged at 3.8km (backed
up by Google Maps) was estimated at 3.69km by the
Ticwatch. That’s not a bad margin for error, mind you.