After months of rumors, Apple finally announced their first wearable product: Apple Watch (notice that the name is not iWatch). Apple website uses the Apple logo in front of the watch’s name: Watch. Apple’s version of smartwatch comes in three categories: Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition. They comes in 2 sizes: 38mm and 42mm. We can choose from 6 different materials: stainless steel, space black stainless steel, silver aluminum, space grey aluminum, 18-karat yellow gold and 18-karat rose gold. To give more choices, there are 6 bands to select: link bracelet, sport band, leather loop, classic buckle, modern buckle and milanese loop. There are color options for some types of band. In the end, customers can choose from many possible combinations of watch size, watch material, watch band and its color.
The design of Apple Watch looks nice and generally better than other smartwatches in the market as per today. However, it’s still too thick for my personal taste, and I’m a bit concerned with the battery life since Apple said one charge could only power the watch for “about a day”. I still enjoy my Pebble smartwatch today and I find it convenient that I only need to charge it every 5-6 days.
Apple Watch display is touch sensitive, but it also introduces scroll-based input called Digital Crown. I would be very interested to test this Digital Crown in Apple Store when this watch is available for purchase in 2015. But for now, it seems like a good idea to have an alternative method of interaction that does not rely on touching the screen.
To protect from everyday wear, Apple is protected by scratch-resistant sapphire glass. Sapphire is said to be the second strongest transparent material after diamond. So let’s wait and hear the experience from first adopters when it becomes available.
For the price, Apple says Apple would cost FROM $349. This means that some combinations of watch material and band would be more expensive than the others.
From the software side, Apple uses its own software, not iOS. It can connect to our iPhones via Bluetooth, but it also have WiFi connectivity. It can display notifications just like any other smartwatch, but it can analyze our incoming messages and suggest possible replies. We can use it to talk to other users directly, some sort of walkie-talkie. Plus it has its own animated emoji.
As a fitness device, Apple Watch is packed with a bunch of sensors, from accelerometer to heart rate detector. Apple Watch users will be able to send their heartbeat to other users. Though I’m still not sure how many people will ever use this feature.
We can use Apple Watch to talk to Siri. We can see Maps. If you have older iPhone, you can use this smartwatch for Apple Pay, though I’m not sure how secure would that be since iPhone models before iPhone 5S don’t have fingerprint scanner.
In the end, I see Apple Watch as a nice device in a new category for Apple. However, I decided to wait for few more years until Apple has gained sufficient experience in this new category so they can offer better design, preferably thinner with much better battery life. Maybe eventually I will replace my Pebble with Apple Watch. But for now, Apple has failed to convince me to spend few hundred dollars for a first generation product.
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