Watch with crown on the left

It’s been nearly four months since I bought myself the Pixel Watch as a post-Christmas present, and I’m pretty pleased with it. One thing Google has absolutely nailed is payments; entering the PIN once when you put it on in the morning and then just a double-tap on the crown to enter payment mode is perfect UX.

It’s also possible to use Google Wallet more generally, for example if your train ticket is a QR code, you can bring it up on the watch screen. But I don’t tend to do that much because it’s too easy to knock the crown and scroll to something else.

Mooching round the shops this morning, I kept catching the crown on the sleeve of my shirt, interfering with my attempts to pay. And it finally occurred to me to ask: one in nine of the world’s population is left-handed (and most of us wear watches on our right wrist), so did Google think of this?

They did! There’s a setting in the Wear app to change whether the crown is on the left or right, which flips the screen orientation, and the straps are swappable (i.e. the bit they mate with is the same on both sides of the watch, so you can wear it the other way up).

With that niggle sorted, I’ll be using this even more.