A good example of Apple's use of the watch face design would be photos. Really who wants to see a photo you have reduced down to a severely cropped out circle. Apple uses the watch remote to show you the preview window on your iPhone camera so you can use the watch to snap the picture. Imagine trying that on a circular screened watch. No I think Apple got it right in rectangular. Maps would be another great use of a rectangular screen. You simply see more of the area you WANT to see when you are viewing these things.
Right, because people buy the Watch to look at their 12MP photos and 4K videos shot with their iPhone 6S on a 1" screen... Gather the family around, uncle Joe is gonna have a slideshow on his Apple smartwatch! /s
A round display of the same height actually gives the camera viewfinder preview window a larger image, making it easier to see on a 1" display, as well as a complete widescreen viewfinder, rather than Apple's cropped one, to ensure you don't cut off anything important in your framing. And there's more room for additional controls as well, if needed.
And as for how much more area you have for maps, a round watch of the same height as the Watch actually displays more of the mapped area, giving a better perspective for the wearer to orient themselves.
You couldn't have picked two worse examples to make your point, as a round watch display such as that found in the Huawei watch, actually offers more advantages over the rectangular Watch, at the exact same height.
Moreover, the following example shows how much better a round watch displays a message for use with the "glances" Jony Ive said he designed the watch for ... no need to squint at the round display, which does just as good a job displaying the message as the rectangular display.
The only advantage a rectangular watch face offers is scrolling blocks of text, which quite frankly is the last thing anybody would likely want to read on a 1" display. And we're not likely to see an iBooks app for the Watch any time soon.
