Apple Announces the Apple Watch; Available Next Year
by Joshua Ho on September 9, 2014 2:06 PM EST
Apple has thrown their hat into the wearable ring with the Apple watch, which tries to bring a better user experience to the watch without trying to adapt iOS to the watch with multi-touch gestures that we're familiar with on the iPhone.
There's a single crystal sapphire display, a digital dial crown that acts as a home button and a scroll system. There's also a strong emphasis on haptic feedback which allows for linking of watches to share notifications by sending taps in any possible pattern. This is done by using a force sensitive touchscreen, which is a method of navigating along with the scrolling dial. This allows for subtle communication that doesn't rely on obvious sound or gestures. It's also possible to send taps based upon pulse/heart beat.
There are IR lights and sapphire lenses on the back of the watch for heart rate and serves as a magnetic alignment wireless charging system. The accuracy of the watch is no more than 50 milliseconds off at any time.
In order to support this watch, Apple has also designed a custom SoC called S1, likely for battery life and sensor integration and reduction of board area.
There are six different straps that are easily exchanged. The sport band has multiple colors and is some kind of rubber. There's a leather sports strap which has multiple magnets to ensure that the fit works correctly. There's also a traditional leather strap and a stainless steel link bracelet. There's also a stainless steel mesh band that is infinitely adjustable. There are also two versions of each watch edition, one larger and one smaller.
The Apple Watch also has NFC and will work with Apple Pay.
There are actually three variants though, which include the standard Apple Watch, Watch Sport, and the Watch Edition which has 18 karat gold for the casing. The sport edition has a anodized aluminum casing.
Furthermore the watch will also come in two different case sizes to account for different wrist sizes (essentially his & her watch sizes). These sizes are 38mm and 42mm tall respectively.
The Apple Watch must be paired with an iPhone to work properly. It starts at $349 USD and will go on sale early 2015.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
122 Comments
View All Comments
fteoath64 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
This is where the risk comes in for Apple. The market hype caused last year kept building so pressure from the shareholders and press is such that, if they failed to announce this year, it would negatively affect their stock prices. So they had no choice. It is their own fault but it seems they handled it well so far. This risk now is negative press on what is so far released or demo-ed. Also, since their cards are out, the competitor has more intelligence in terms of leap-frogging their efforts especially in fixing the faults and building an even better "user experience" than Apple originally had.The Crown idea is just gimmicky and stupid really. The edges of the watch and corners can be exploited with "special" touch, slide and tap" to seal the user experience as an extension of the screen touches. Apple needs to try really hard and release HALF a dozen models to enable choice to users. It is a watch and now their phone has 4 models. Let me repeat FOUR models in how many years ?!. Louder, the competition is thundering ....
FriendlyUser - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I'd like to read an unbiased review of the thing. Intuitively, smartwatches must suck, but maybe Apple has done something nice with the idea. We'll see...douglaswilliams - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Waterproof? Can I swim with it? To track my time and laps...Connoisseur - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Pretty much every mechanical/quartz watch is water resistant to some degree. Even the ones that aren't specifically rated to a depth. I doubt you'll be able to go swimming with this. I think its just protected from splashes, sweat and very light submerging (a sink)SilthDraeth - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Even if the watch is water proof enough to swim with prolonged exposure submerged under water, the info states it must communicate with iPhone 5 or newer to function. So you better have a full on waterproof case for your iPhone and hope it can communicate through the water. If swimming competitively I can't imagine dragging a phone with you!Basically this is a simple processor to display pass data back and forth to the iPhone and display what info the iPhone tells it to. It hopefully can tel time on its own. And maybe around an alarm if the iPhone moves out of range.
I didn't catch if it were WiFi or Bluetooth.
fteoath64 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
NO chance of swimming with it!. No way in this model. Maybe three years from now ....isa - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I'm glad Apple is in the smartwatch market to drive competition, and I'm confident they'll eventually provide a competent offering, but this first version will not scare any competitor or delight any customer compared to what's currently available. No GPS, no SIM, high price, clunky look. Ouch.deadlockedworld - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Seriously? You want a SIM card on your watch? ... uh?Agree that its not the most attractive, but the apple pay feature is going to crush everything. Google has been trying to do this for a while now, and seems to have already lost the lead with retailers who must just be THRILLED at the idea of higher-income iphone shoppers walking around buying everything.
Morawka - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
i bet retailers will be upset about some aspects of the apple mobile payments system. For example, When you make a purchase with your iphone, it uses a temporary credit card number. A lot of companies are gonna be upset that they dont have their customers card info on file.bplewis24 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That makes no sense, even assuming Apple owners are higher income. They've already been spending their money at wherever these pay terminals will exist. It's not like they had no way to pay for things before. Retailers aren't going to make any more money than they did before, no matter what is used for payment.