Apple Watch Series 5
apple.com
apple.com
Is there a standard for what "all-day" means? I think most would initially assume 24 hours, but thinking about it more, it seems reasonable to consider "can work from wake up to sleep" or "can work from sunup to sundown"/
I hate it when marketers get to make up their own meaning of commonly used words, usually making them mean less than they ordinarily do. With "all-day" meaning anything between 6.5 (see parallel comment) and 20 hours, it's becoming a worthless and purposefully confusing term.
(Note if that a physical store advertises it's open "all day", you expect it to be open from 00:00 to 23:59.)
Also, nobody says "open all day" in retail because retailers would be more explicit about the fact that they are open at night, thus you have 24 hour convenience stores, not "all day".
However, I used to leave the charger plugged in my bathroom because I would charge it when I showered. I noticed the charging posts got crud on them and got smaller over time until my FitBit would no longer charge. Eventually, I started unplugging it except for when I was charging and that fixed my issue.
My wife and I have had the same bad luck with most wearables. I went through 3 MS bands, she went through 2 fitbits and all of them physically broke.
I had a Motorola Android Wear and Polar M600, both of which degraded to less than 24 hours of battery life after less than a year of ownership of each.
I have a Garmin 645M, which I've had since launch, and it still works fine and has days of battery life, even when doing morning runs listening to spotify from the watch. I finally convinced my wife to try a Garmin 245, and she hasn't destroyed it yet.
Considering how fast Apple Watch charges, a 7 day battery life isn’t that compelling considering how much you get from an Apple Watch compared to Fitbit.
People are saying "charge it during showers" - IMO that's just too much inconvenience for no benefit - I shower in the gym - do I go and charge it then ? Or when I'm tired and want to go to bed - another thing I can easily forget. I like the idea of a smartwatch - would be nice to have a better screen and more rich interface than my Withings - but sub 3-4 days battery is a no-go for me. I've seen some smartwatches that fit that criteria tho - so will need to do some shopping around and see the tradeoffs
I do miss the week long battery from my Pebble Time, but having to charge it daily hasn't been a real problem. The main nuisance is needing to bring the proprietary charger when I travel for a couple days.
Yikes, that would be a total deal-breaker for me. I have enough chargers and cables to remember as it is.
Kind of difficult to see why they'd use anything other than micro-USB anyway?
Would be even better if it could charge on standard Qi pads, but no such luck. Maybe there’s something about the size of the coils, who knows?
But - the heatset also has a micro USB port built in, so if I don't have the charging point (or the charging case, which it also came with), I can just use a USB cable. This seems the best approach, IMO.
For a watch, 18 hours might not even cover a full work day.
I use it to roughly track calorie burn and movement throughout the day so I like to keep it on as much as possible. I don't track my sleep metrics except for time.
It goes on the charger when I go to bed at the same time, and right beside my phone. It works. The most tedious thing I do is change the band from my leather one to silicon that I wear during my time at the gym.
Meaning what? I can't even think of a single time where I actually had to think about what the battery level is and I only charge it while I'm in the shower in the morning.
If you enjoy your watch, that's cool and totally great. I stopped wearing mine and it was mentally freeing not having one extra device's battery to monitor throughout the day. Would definitely recommend.
I don't have to do that, though. That's my point. It wouldn't free me from anything because I currently don't think about it ever.
I'm not claiming you worry about it or even that everyone else worries about it. I'm saying some people like myself worry about it, and not having to worry about it is nice. If you don't have to worry about it _and_ wear it, that's nice too.
I don't understand what you're trying to argue here, but I'm done with this thread.
The Garmin Fenix can last up to two weeks on a charge - I usually charge mine once a week, and with 5 workouts where I have chest band in use it's usually down to about 47% when I connect the charger. I mainly use it for the fitness tracking, but I have notifications enabled for text messages and other chat apps and the calendar.
It's been worn every day (and charged every night) since it was purchased.
Battery has been fine for me. I wear it at night for sleep tracking, and charge it when I shower. Even on days when I shower once, I usually manage to get through the day without issue.
It lasted for two weeks and a half reading about 4 hours a day.
Sorry about your watch though, I'd be bummed too if that happened.
I took it to the Apple Store. They gave me a brand-new stainless steel Series 0. Apparently the battery swells sometimes, in the older watches, after a lot of use, and pops off the screen.
That's what I call customer service. That's the experience I get over, and over, and over again, from Apple. That's why I keep coming back.
Apple backs up its products.
Take your Watch in, and give it a try.
EDIT: I am just catching up on all the announcements, while it was expected in the lead up to today[1] there was no talk of native sleep tracking during the event. I wonder if it will be rolled out quietly so Apple could have plausible deniability on 24/7 usage being "recommended" or if they decided to completely scrap it due to battery performance issues.
[1] - https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/02/apple-watch-sleep-tracking-re...
Exactly! At this point, my expectation is that I would wear the watch at all times except when I shower in the morning, and that is when I would charge it. But it won't charge that quickly. :(
Which means I either have to give up sleep tracking or activity tracking to charge it.
It sounds like they need to make it so that the bands can store energy so that I can charge one band and wear one band and then switch them each day.
Long time Apple Watch owner, currently using the Series 4 - charging while in the shower is exactly how I charge my watch. It has never run out using this way.
I imagine as the battery fades this might be less workable though.
(I do think they're potentially useful for someone who feels tired a lot and doesn't understand why. I'm less convinced by the value of ongoing tracking.)
I have the same issue as the original poster in that I find wearing something on my wrist while I sleep uncomfortable. The Beddit is a strip that goes under my sheets. So I guess that’s why not.
I started using a Whoop band a couple of months ago for mostly that purpose and I often forget that I'm wearing it.
I used such for a couple years. Best part was specifying what time range I wanted to wake up, and it would watch for the best actual time to wake me. Much happier mornings then.
The band I have is of a suitable length for both wrist and ankle use.
My biggest complaint is there's no way to disable the screen that's good enough for sleeping. In theater mode it still wakes up if you tap the glass and I accidentally bump it way too often when lying in bed. I really want a better night time mode where only pressing the crown will light up the screen. If they do add an officially supported sleep tracker I hope they'd run into this issue and fix it.
Given that sleep tracking is one of the prime uses of my Apple Watch, I prefer to have it on my wrist all night, and charge during the late mornings usually, at me desk when I am in the middle of a block of coding.
Just expand that for a bit.
For people doing Coding, that might have meant every second of it, for normal people on a computer, There will be likely be 20%- 50% of times you idling ( in computer terms ) or doing something else.
So it is not just 24/7, you just aren't really using the computer for every minutes every seconds.
2019 watches: battery lasts a couple of hours
Edit: Some info that I found online. According to this article from 2015 [1 ]the apple watch is equivalent to two iPhone4s (Not sure I believe that but if true incredible). Also this quote:
"Meanwhile, the Cray-2 supercomputer from 1985, which is the fastest machine in the world for its time, is now only equal to an iPhone 4."
Another quote :
"The Apple Watch performs about 7 billion FLOPS"
According to wikipedia [2]:
"The Cray-2 released in 1985 was a 4 processor liquid cooled computer totally immersed in a tank of Fluorinert, which bubbled as it operated.[8] It could perform to 1.9 gigaflops and was the world's second fastest supercomputer after M-13"
So assuming that all of the information is correct then it is indeed true that the Apple watch from today is many times more powerful than a super computer from the 1980s.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3098315/The-...
2019 watches: 30g and cost $400
https://www.timex.com/browse/collections/ironman/
(sorry)
I moved on to a Garmin 645M with almost a week of battery life. It is nice to be able to travel for a week on business and not worry about carrying a charger. The display is clear and always on.. It plays Spotify so I can run without my phone.
Some days I do briefly end up charging it again in the evening for a while. Some days I don't let it charge enough in the morning (sleeping in, or leaving early) and then end up with not enough battery to make it through the night.
I'm curious if you can disable the always on screen for longer battery on the new watch, or how much of a difference that would even make. I don't mind the screen turning off when im not using it.
But I just dug into the specs for my Series 3 and it's only advertised as "18+ hours" also, yet I get 23+ hours from it even after a year and a half of true "all day" use. I wear it for sleep tracking with the AutoSleep app. It's in its cradle 20 mins twice a day when I shower. So yay for conservative Apple specs?
Hopefully this means the Series 5 isn't actually a battery downgrade. If it is, then the Apple-approved sleep apps in their App Store may not get the love they have received with older Apple Watchen.
I can usually use it until 1 or 2 PM that day before it dies. That's a 29+ hour battery life.
24 hours means that people will sleep with it and forget to charge in the morning -> annoyed users.
36 hours would require charging every other night, but then you'd miss every other night's sleep tracking -> annoyed users.
There's really no way for Apple to win, unless they jump up to full 7 days or something.
A 24 or 36 hr battery that recharges during a 15m shower I imagine would work for most people.
I was really hoping Apple would step up their Apple Watch game this year, with a longer battery and native sleep tracking -- that's all I want. Personally, I don't really care about being able to answer calls from a watch when I have my phone on me 24/7. Time to wait another year I guess and keep using my Versa :-)
Granted, there’s no native sleep tracking (yet?) but there are some 3rd party apps.
I just can't get past the 18ish hours battery.
I know when I possible eventually actually own and use an Apple Watch, I am sure some of the features trigger the "once you go x you can't go back" type thing, but until then, nope.
Though my Pebble is, unfortunately, starting to creak a little, some notifications are not always shown etc, so a Fitbit may be more likely upgrade. They at least have 5 days battery.
I use my Xiaomi Mi Band with about 10 days battery time even when using sleep tracker and heart rate tracker every minute 24/7. It costs less then 10% of the Apple Watch as well.
I even wrote a little JS app for it to pull down transit in real time - I know Apple Watches have Citymapper etc but there's something about being able to hack it on the fly.
Here's the thing: My Series 3 easily lasts me 2 days without using it for things like exercise, bluetooth audio, etc. With exercise it lasts all day. I have never run out of power unless I didn't charge it the previous evening and had multiple exercise sessions on the same charge. This is way better than my Series 0 did.
So the 18 hours is really a lot more than 18 hours for most people.
My question now, is: Will my battery life really only be 18 hours with this always-on display?
I can't because I'm a restless sleeper and I end up knocking myself in the face with my watch if I sleep while its on.
Call me old fashioned if you must. I disabled gesture based display on (with night mode turning it off when asleep) as the first thing when I got the S3 Frontier, then sold it / upgraded to Watch later for improved battery life. It does at least 50% better and is faster as well.
Garmin watches also do well for displaying time, even better in fact, but they are a fair bit more expensive.
From "Apple Watch Series 5 Battery Information" (https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/)
I would definitely travel to Norway to buy one of those.
Saving songs is spotty too, some of the "saved" songs on my phone don't actually have the data and won't play when I'm offline. I can't figure out how to force them to redownload short of maybe uninstalling the app, so sucks to be me I guess. Spotify's mobile app is so bad that I'm constantly reconsidering my subscription. I'd go so far as to say that being able to explore new artists and save their discography for later when I'm commuting is a meaningful improvement to my quality of life, but Spotify has managed to make the experience so shitty that I usually just turn on the radio instead.
https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/603229
It's the only watch (or was at the time) that has an independent Spotify app.
Spotify issued a cease and desist within days. I still have it installed on my phone and watch - it's a long way short of perfect (when it loses its connection it hangs and there's no easy way to reset it) - but it does work.
So it's not Apple stopping the release of this functionality.
I assume this is all tied up with their campaign about unfair treatment on the App Store, but it still makes little sense to me. Apollo was written by a single developer in their spare time, it works (although not perfectly - still good given it's a 1.0 and they were working alone with no support) and has been released for almost a year.
If I can’t actually cache my raw media files onto the watch directly and play using any watch-only player app I want, then it’s unusable. Any solution that requires streaming or tethering is a total non-solution.
But a lot of times the decision to buy a watch is fashion-driven rather than utility-driven, and depending on what city you live in, either high-tech fitness watches are everywhere, or anything other than an Apple Watch gets you a dirty look.
Looking forward to the inevitable outcry on this forum once the EU competition commissioner levies another fine on Apple worth a day's profits...
It's completely do-able and Spotify has the capability to do it, now and in the recent past.
Garmin has always-on, reflective screen watches that can last for weeks on a single charge. I shouldn't need to babysit my watch.
Does Pebble have a sim? The biggest benefit of apple watch for me is that I can take it anywhere without my phone, play sports, shopping, running, the sim card in the phone is the best thing that keeps me away from staring at my phone screen while I am going out.
Still, I found my Pebble greatly reduced the time I spent looking at my phone because I didn't need to take my phone out of my pocket upon receiving a notification or to check the next item on my calendar.
It is impressive and I'm curious why Apple cannot compete.
Also, I haven't looked recently because I ultimately found my Fenix 5 wholly unsatisfactory for hiking distance tracking with GPS but the watch with GPS only lasted for about a day. (Which is what I basically care about for a smart watch.)
Even if they don’t already have a lot of excellent embedded hardware folks, which I doubt, I don’t think they would have trouble hiring them, if they wanted to.
I have a Garmin FR645 "smart" watch. It lasts two weeks between charges if I don't use GPS a lot; if I run 5 times in the week (w/ GPS on) it'll go most of a week between charges.
But, it doesn't have much of an app ecosystem. Just a few widget-type things. Notifications are basic, and mostly unidirectional. The screen is nowhere near as nice as an Apple Watch. And no cellular.
But, for basic smart things - GPS, simple notifications, and telling time - it's excellent. And costs less than the Apple.
Until Apple can make their watch last most of a week, I'll stick with slightly dumber smart watches that I don't have to think about too much.
Feature wise I honestly think that Garmin makes better sport watches, while Apple does better smart watches.
Yes, I can.
I have a Garmin 5 Plus and the reason it can get such great battery life is it's ####ing massive, with most of the volume devoted to battery. It also doesn't do a bunch of the stuff that the Apple Watch does, with all wireless connectivity requiring Bluetooth sync to your phone.
It's fairly rugged and a decent enough watch but, unless you're outdoors all the time, I wouldn't recommend it: it's bulky and somewhat ugly. I've stopped wearing it because I didn't find it that motivating in terms of keeping fit: ironically I did better before I got it, and am doing better again now I've stopped wearing it.
Also, that battery life tanks the moment you switch on GPS: then you'll be down to about 24 hours.
Overall I'd describe Garmin smartwatches as highly overrated.
Garmin just introduced a watch with an AMOLED touchscreen, the Venu. According to the reviews I've read, it is basically the same watch as the Vivoctive 4. The Venu gets 2 days of battery life, the Vivoactive 4 gets 7.
The general concept is, either it lasts for weeks or it lasts for one day, if it lasts for 3 days you'll forget to charge it, if it lasts for weeks it's okay if you forget, a small reminder can tell you to charge it enough for a day in a few minutes.
The trade off is insane in comparison, the Apple Watch is capable of a ton of things you just can't do in a longer battery-life product, things like phone calls, cellular connection, sharp graphics and quality voice replies. Meanwhile the garmin products have fantastic readability outdoors on their low res, low power transflective LCDs.
They simply are on a different roadmap and each roadmap has its own constraints.
Apple doesn’t bullshit with battery estimates.
I had two Pebbles and the first thing that went wrong with them was the battery. If I didn't charge it every night it would die in the middle of the day.
Similarly, I'd hoped they would announce some standardization to weightlifting in HealthKit. The watch and iphone health options are very cardio-centric, and every weightlifting app has implemented their own internal 1RM tracking which should be at an OS-level instead.
The watch needs to charge without taking it off the wrist--for example from using an Apple laptop or keyboard.
Obviously not a solution to the native sleep tracking issue but definitely good for what’s available right now.
I tried different 3rd party sleep tracking apps, but it was so inaccurate that it was basically useless. I assumed that this is reason that they didn't have it.
With all the watchOS 6 stuff that makes it more independent (App Store on watch, iPhone-less apps, etc), I was thinking this might be the year. Oh well, bet it happens next year.
Looking at the trend, I wonder if a time will come when the good old "Nokia" phones will be the new "hip".
I'm currently using a palm companion, and seeing if I can use it for most of my daily tasks.
IIRC, there's a 90 day window once a year right after enrollment time where you can buy a watch through Aetna.
A little off topic, but I worked in VR in the mid 1990s for SAIC, and Angel Studios/Disney. I am so very happy to see inexpensive consumer VR rigs like the Quest. Some of the media produced for the Quest is very good, Vader Immortal being my favorite entertainment ever.
It took a while for iPhone, too.
For this to work well for me personally, though, I think Siri needs to be better.
Because I wear a nice watch already. It only tells the time, but it's also jewelry. A lot of us still want a mechanical watch on our wrists.
So where does that leave us if we also want what the Apple Watch offers, but aren't willing to displace our nice analog timepieces?
Sure, I could make an Apple PocketWatch (and it's tempting, since iPhone is now available only in "big" or "huge") but one of the most interesting things is the sensors on your skin and vibration as notification.
Maybe you could wear it on your ankle like a convict under house arrest?
I can't remember the name but when I was a kid, there was a children's book with a gorilla that sold stolen watches, always had a bunch of them on his arm. That look might work, and then I could have a Garmin too in case the battery dies on my Apple.
[1] https://everythingbusytown.fandom.com/wiki/Bananas_Gorilla
Whenever people ask about the two watches (and it has been EXTREMELY rare), I just point out how convenient it is.
Also, check out Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf: https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/12/27/16866f394f281e17a80...
Fidel Castro: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/46/c4/41/46c441dfbc92a5d0d748...
Buzz Aldrin: https://hodinkee.imgix.net/uploads/images/1493225029494-v5fg...
Boom - timepiece.
Probably needs more fashion-hacking than that, but as the phone is more stand-alone capable... one day I'm sure it'll have some ride-share apps built in, and at that point it'd be enough for a night on the town, right?
I think companies will continue to explore this space because there's potential to find a big winner. But they're contending with the difficulty of miniaturisation on top of the challenge of usability.
p.s. an idea that just crossed my mind was a smartwatch in a pen. Sure, pens are too easy to lose, but it could do some interesting things with input.
AR smartglasses.
Still looking for a replacement, ideally no display (even longer battery life, smaller), heart rate monitor, motion tracker and everything just pushed into iOS health app or a cloud-less app.
In the meantime I will give the Apple Watch a chance.
[1] https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/548743/pn/010-01955-36
Just give me all of the Health-related aspects of the watch without anything else. It doesn't even have to have a display — I can view Health data on my phone. I LOVE my Watch but there are circumstances where a mechanical watch is the way to go.
And even then I wouldn't. I'm not a walking billboard.
Is what it is, but people treat the Apple logo and product as far more of an important status symbol than Nike.
I would go so far as to suggest that the Nike logo cheapens the "person billboard" that Apple turns customers into
In America, among many groups of people, brands are social signaling on how important/wealthy you are. It only tapers off a bit at higher incomes (>1M+). Below that, it's rampant.
Though I will say Nike shoes tend to be an exception across the board. Seems like everyone has a pair of those.
For HN: Cars, Electronics, Universities, FAANG on your resume, consumer products that signal your care for the environment or concern for your health/fitness.
But if you still want to frame it as "paying for advertising a brand" you could look into the ways that people use brands to say something about themselves. I recommend reading about the success of Starbucks, Ferrari, and Apple, especially the first 5 or so years of the iPod.
This happens in Frankfurt too. Adidas, Puma, and many more clothing companies in Germany are not cheap and display their brands prominently
Considering all of the luxury retailers I've seen in Frankfurt, and all of the branded soccer jerseys I've seen so many people wearing in Frankfurt, and all of the non-generic everything I've seen in Frankfurt, I think it's disingenuous to frame this as a geographic issue.
Perhaps if you define your geography as whatever seat you currently occupy, your argument holds. But Frankfurt is hardly immune from the concept of conspicuous consumption.
They must be working on this, it would perfectly well into their health theme, and they bought Beddit.
Another year.
That ceramic case is tempting, though.
With a Series 4, I can get through the night. I suspect that a large part of that is that I keep "Wake Screen on Wrist Raise" off most of the time. Generally I only enable it when doing a workout (~30 minutes a day) and sometimes in the kitchen when using timers. Another factor is probably that I don't use it for much more than telling time, checking my activity level, checking weather, and reading the occasional text message.
If I charge to 99% or 100% during breakfast, I'm almost always above 60% at bedtime, and overnight with the Sleep++ app tracking uses under 20%.
Unfortunately Fitbit decided to discontinue the display-less flex 2 and now I'm a bit confused on what to do next.
My routine is to charge my Apple Watch when I come back from work and put it back on before I go to sleep.
Or is there some other sleep related feature that requires a sensor other than HR that I’m not aware about?
I thought the charging thing would be deadly for my use of it, but it is so much less of a thing than I imagined it would be. Firstly, sleep tracking uses surprisingly little battery. Often I'll see less than an 8% drop over night. Additionally I just drop it on the charger in the morning while doing my morning routines and that gets it quickly to 100%. Very occasionally I do a short burst in the evening.
I never thought it would be worth that sort of hassle, but it is a thousand fold. I send and receive messages from the watch. Answer calls. Look up things. Use the activity track. Use it to control media. It is my alarm clock. With the recent betas of 6.0 the usability has improved dramatically -- before all sorts of operations would yield "I can't do that" sorts of responses, whereas now I'm getting just brilliant results.
I was a naysayer of the thing (I strongly felt that if you couldn't go days without recharging it was a dud). The health features got me to give a shot, and I am a very strong believer now. It is an absolutely wonderful device.
Edit: with my Series 4, I wear my watch all day, and charge it when I’m showering/getting ready in the morning and when I eat dinner/relax in the evening—times when I don’t care to be hyper-connected to notifications, etc. anyway.
This allows me to wear the watch, essentially, 24 hours a day.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pillow-automatic-sleep-tracker...
I guess it wasn't finished, but the WatchOs beta and iOS13 beta included sleep tracking code.
Is there something I'm not aware of?
There are people trying to "optimize" their sleep, of course, but the real benefit is getting a large chunk of the population to notice something is wrong.
The same with the ECG. A one lead ECG isn't much, but it means a lot when you give it without any hassle or additional cost to millions of people.
I've also used it to experiment a bit with how drinking at night affects my sleep. (noticeably!). I could do that with just how I feel, but the hard data is easier to correlate later.
Speaking of myself, I bought a Pebble watch back in 2013 or so. I quickly realized I liked wearing a watch. Then I also realized I really only needed the time function. I then went from the Pebble to a Seiko mechanical. Now I have no smart watches and about ten different mechanical and quartz watches.
The main reasons I prefer conventional watches: 1) They come in a much wider array of styles 2) They don't run out of power on long flights and leave you without your time reference right when you need it the most 3) They are generally cheaper 4) Some of them, like my Casios, have great features that work offline, like a digital compass, thermometer, altimeter ... all powered by solar! 5) To me (and this is a matter of personal preference) they look better 6) There are a lot of closet wristwatch nerds lurking in tech companies. Once you start wearing a Seiko mechanical, for example, you will soon get comments from other undercover watch nerds. I actually enjoy this random camaraderie.
Right now you cannot even set up a new Watch device without an iPhone.
The only thing I'd miss dropping to a watch + decent point-n-shoot instead of an iPhone is live photos, which are maybe the most important feature to me from the iOS ecosystem released in the last, oh, decade. Only reason I'd even hesitate to go watch-only.
Right now the Apple Watch is the only thing keeping me from switching away from the iPhone.
If I could pair an Apple Watch with the Razer Phone 2, I would be so happy and never look back. And the problem will only get worse the next 5 years as folding screens come out for the very high end market.
This is the latest one.
I switched from an Apple watch to various non-Apple smartwatches when I switched to an Android phone. I used a Ticwatch E (for over a year), the new Samsung Galaxy watch (for a week), and the very new Fossil Gen 5 watch for the last month.
The Ticwatch E uses Wear OS, but is relatively slow and has battery life issues if you are not careful; however, it is very light (40 grams with band!).
I tried very hard to like the bigger Samsung Galaxy watch, but for me it was far too heavy (63 grams + band), which drove me nuts, and the app ecosystem was painful to me. In fairness, the battery life was really amazing though.
I currently wear a Gen 5 Fossil, which weighs 45 grams + band, and is fast enough, with a lot more RAM/storage than the ticwatch and newer generation processor. I'm happy with it. (For comparison, the Apple Watch case is 50 grams.)
Overall, I like Wear OS significantly more than the Samsung watch operating system (which I really didn't like, due to the apps being so expensive and limited). Wear OS is also nice because there are tens of thousands of watch faces to choose from, and some of the faces (that cost $1) are also very highly customizable.
The Apple Watch Series 5 is an absolutely incredible piece of technology, and I wish I at least had the option to choose it, but I guess I don't since I'm not using an iPhone...
Presumably they didn’t talk about it because all the performance gains were spent on battery life to make the always-on screen practical?
I don't need my watch to be on when I'm not looking at it!
Th app is so so, I am trying to work out if I can get the raw data from it. It does sync with a load of other apps.
They are health/fitness oriented and have week long battery lives.
But I was really expecting more innovation from the "by innovation only" event. Garmin's flagship watch has a feature that extends the battery life by embedded TWO SOLAR PANELS into the display. That is innovation.
There are some things that the Apple Watch seemed designed to be tethered to an iPhone, almost like they were (bizarrely) afraid that it would make people not want to upgrade their phone. They've taken a really rapid approach away from that, though, and the watch is becoming dramatically more powerful by itself, even though it could already do all of the basic things.
By about 15%, according to that page. Anybody know how realistic Garmin’s battery estimates normally are or have a pointer to a real world test? I find it hard to believe that a watch’s face would be facing the sun a lot, even when not wearing a coat or long-sleeved shirt.
I charge it in the car during my commute on Fridays.
On top of that during a normal week of milage (~50miles) I would only take it off to charge once after my Saturday long run.
Regardless my point was more that I consider that solar technology to be much more deserving of the title of "innovative" regardless of it's performance (things get better over iteration) than an "always on display" something that all of my Garmin watches I've owned over the last decade have done.
Generally I charge it every night or every other night so I don't know how long it stacks up against its estimates, but with some activities sprinkled in I think it's fair to say that a "1 week" estimate is closer to "4-5 days" if you’re active, depending on how long you're actively recording activities for during that time. As a plain smart-watch without tracking an activity or listening to music, it's down about 10% at the end of the day on those sedentary days, so I think that’s pretty in line with its numbers
What do you use for audiobooks? Audible on the AW is realllly dodgy for me.
I like how they have thought, don't need a sim to make an emergency call, let alone credit, why not add the ability to call emergency services and use the GPS to pick the right local number.
Equally the safety feature for older people is great initiative, though I do feel for younger users, this may cause some false positives and produce an unhappy ending when suddenly your watch has called the emergency services because you had a rest after some form of exercise.
With that in mind, I'd imagine that during that minute a countdown upon the display starts and audible alert of about to call the emergency services - just to limit false positives taking up emergency services time. Also for legit cases, would offer reassurance to somebody who may be incapacitated but able to hear. Maybe they do have that, not sure, and will find out come an in depth review.
There is both an audible alert and a display change with countdown before it starts the call.
Folks stash their devices away under warm clothing and end up not noticing the countdown or reaching their device in time. Be careful with it if you are involved in high velocity sports.
[1]: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/01/09/ski-areas-apple-watch...
(Then the acceleration will asymptotically approach 1 g again as the device's velocity approaches terminal velocity, but well before then the software will have determined that the device is in free fall.)
That said, I don’t think it’s a problem in most situations but during winter I might not have reached my watch under several layers of clothing in time to cancel the countdown.
I now usually leave my iPhone at home. I am trying to follow a digital minimalism program, following slow media ideas, and using digital devices for highly productive activities, not to waste time.
I find AirPods work really well with my Apple Watch, no iPhone lifestyle.
The AirPods are small and light in a pocket and the watch itself is light and designed for wearing comfort.
> the screen intelligently dims when a user’s wrist is down and returns to full brightness with a raise or a tap
These two statements seem somewhat contradictory.
I wonder if you can turn this feature off so that it behaves like the previous Apple Watch and save more battery.
I love that they're touting this amazing feature which exists on any cheap $5 drug store watch.
Is there a hardware reason that couldn't have been implemented?
People seems to value things very differently, so for iPhone, they valued it as a Phone, when it is more like a Pocket Computer with very decent Camera. But they still see it as a Phone, so $1099 is expensive.
When it comes to Watches, we are used to seeing Super expensive watches, I don't ever see people ( General Public, not tech nerds ) comparing Apple Watch with what ever Digital Watches, like Gear Watch. And for this reason Apple Watch is affordable to many.
And I see it is very much possible for Apple to bump the price and include Solid Battery or some other form of Breakthrough Battery technology along with Super fast Charging.
I wouldn't mind spending $1099 if it had 3x Battery Capacity and Super Fast Charging.
I have wondered if they use the refurb store to clear out new inventory at a discount, but retaining more revenue than if they sold to a retailer. By officially discontinuing a product, they can force (most) people into buying one of the new models.
Protip: the extended warranty that comes with buying something with a credit card DOES NOT APPLY to refurb purchases. That means if you buy a refurb, or even if Apple swaps your device for a refurb when you take it in for service, you can't utilize the extended warranty.
If so, how come this is not a #1 issue Apple needs to address? The Watch is then unreliable for notifications and doesn’t eliminate the need to check the phone from time to time. I’m amazed this is not talked about.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-watch/apple-watch?option.watc...
Imagine a calendar event entry on the watch face you didn’t want the world to see but now that it’s always on it will be shown.
What do people think the lifetime of this is, 3 years? 10 years?
>Apple Watch Series 5 and Apple Watch Series 3 have a water resistance rating of 50 meters under ISO standard 22810:2010. This means that they may be used for shallow-water activities like swimming in a pool or ocean. However, they should not be used for scuba diving, waterskiing, or other activities involving high-velocity water or submersion below shallow depth.
https://www.apple.com/watch/compare/?afid=p238%7CsR2VtjPIL-d...
Sincerely, other than looks (and I woild still not bring an Apple phone to more formal occasions just like I don't bring my Amazfit) I can't understand why anyone would pay 10x more for an iWatch not can I stand that I would have to charge it everyday.
Revolutionary!
(this is just my opinion)