With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue; I just put it on the charger while in the shower and that does the trick.
I got my first Apple Watch a year and a half ago. After coming to terms with the fact that the form factor has fundamental limitations, it's faded into the background and has been an excellent watch, fitness tracker, and occasional remote control and messaging device. I'm kinda glad that series 11 and 12 haven't given me fomo!
(I do wish they made more good watch faces though...)
I sold my 10 last year and haven’t missed it. You don’t have reasonable access to a charger during a marathon or a long hike, the latter of which needed me to charge my Apple Watch 3 times over the course of 12 hours of hiking.
Will it? Because they kind of made it a point, like they typically do, to say features are only possible due to the new chip.
Not like Apple will let us do anything fun with their APIs, though.
> I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.
Oh, I wouldn't count on it. The older hardware is capable, but Apple is running out of ideas how to make people upgrade.
PA has very strict two party consent wiretap laws I'm not sure this feature would clear.
Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.
I just wish Garmin would get their act together with filtering notifications on iOS. No, I'm sorry, not every app on my phone should be important enough to buzz my wrist. Filtering works fine for Garmin on Android, and apparently for other watch brands on iOS (Coros, Pebble, etc).
The sad thing is all I really need is app-level granularity (slack, you're banned from my wrist!).
If this isn't fixed by the time my 5 year old Fenix fails, I'll move to a different brand that enables filtering.
I can see why others like them (they want WatchOS and Apple-specific capabilities). That stuff is useful, but not often enough for me to care.
Really, the watch was a regular reminder of how functional life was before the watch existed, if that makes sense. It's a genuine marvel, and yet... I got by (and get by) great without it.
I had an Apple Watch series 7, which I had to charge twice a day now. I was on a fence between buying a new AW or switching to another brand, but Apple dropping the software support for my model have made the choice for me. I
I've been using Garmin watches for years, wife always had Apple Watches. This year she got envious enough of the battery life that she also switched to Garmin now. Her watches sometimes barely lasted a day, requiring daily charges. Meanwhile, you get a week of battery easily with most Garmins.
With health, I really wish Apple would truly lean into health...go nuts and try to become effectively a super primary care provider. Integrate with blood tracking, automated diagnostics, something much cooler.
The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable. You have this data, and nobody ever really looks at it. "You had a bad night sleep, maybe sleep more." Yeah no kidding. I want it to say: "Hey we noticed this trend, it could be indicative of X, we recommend Y test. Would you like us to send it to you within 2 hours so you can get more data?"
Looked up apple watch indent reddit and I saw much more serious cases after years of use.
I’ve worn a samsung watch for a year it didn’t leave a mark, casio watches, none. Until apple fixes that weird dome shape never wearing one again. That watch is staying in the box it came in.
Edit: There seems to be people promoting other brands in this thread. Just want to make clear I do not recommend the samsung one either. Don’t want to be labelled as such. Just get a regular watch. Wear it when you go outside and take it off when inside. You were never using the mostly inaccurate health data anyway.
Still doesn’t feel as full. I can feel the two tiny bones on top much better than my right one. The skin texture is different where I wore it.
I own a Withings Scanwatch 2 (and owned a nokia steel hr before that) and can confidently say it is just enough smart watch for me.
My recommendation is: buy the cheapest material one every few years. I only ever had 2 and 5 (upgraded due to always on screen), and am considering to finally upgrade to 12.
Skill issue.
The first thing anyone should do when they get a smart watch is disable all notifications. It's so easy to do and it makes the experience so much better. It's completely backwards that notifications are opt out. Sadly, I've never seen anyone change their defaults.
The main reason I stopped using an Apple Watch is the lackluster battery life; in this series Apple claims 10 hours of battery life for outdoor workouts but without an iPhone. How is that realistic? If I’m going out for a hourlong run perhaps I don’t bring my iPhone, but I’m doing a multihour outdoor workout I would surely bring my phone, and certainly the extra Bluetooth communication would decrease battery life. It’s a silly metric.
We get it, some people don't want to charge a watch even though they have to regularly charge their phone, headphones, laptop and maybe car. Such a weird flex that a watch lasts an extra few days, who cares?! Charge it while you shower and you're good to go
I only really care about a few things (besides telling the time):
- notifications
- unlocking a Mac on proximity
- Apple Pay
- alarms
- skipping a song
Why? How?
There’s no chance we get the AI features so those don’t factor in at all
I guess it’s a bit more frequent sensors for the rest of the world? Not very compelling to upgrade.
except optical HRV at the wrist is garbage
it cannot even measure when there is any movement
you'd think someone would come up with the technology to use the skin contact as a single lead ECG without requiring a second contact point by the other arm (or leg)
guess that's a generation or two away
suunto has the right idea with their tiny movesense ECG and it's even open-source
And to pile on, I switched to Garmin a few years ago after a pixel watch and a galaxy watch, and it's night and day. Battery life, and it's built to actually work offline well (global maps, and all of the tracking).
If you are in the market for a multi hundred dollar watch, you must have considered the Garmin and Apple offering for non-time features. Surely some of those people are happy to share their decision.
i'm going to miss out on all those amazing new features, like... an improved heart rate variability measurement
Previous Apple Watch can do it if you tell it you have afib, but that hurts battery life.
FWIW I have told it I have afib. I used to have problems with battery life, but I find the Series 11 can finally last all day and overnight with always on display+afib/HRV monitoring; and it charges fast enough I can get close to 100% in the shower, meaning it effectively does not have battery issues.
Its position as a health device is underrated in tech circles. As we tech savvy generations age there’s a big market there.
> Longer Workout Battery Life and Faster Charging
Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life9 and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.10
—
An increase to 10 hours of workout tells me battery life is better, but maybe not “better enough” to give the 24 hour number an increase (or the higher HRV checking frequency is eating the rest of the gains)
It's made even worse by the fact that only the newest watches support this, but their external designs are unchanged from past ones, so there's no way to tell who's always listening to everything (I have an Ultra 2, likely my last one).
Is this something most people want?? At the very least I'd appreciate a notification like the unknown airtag thing to tell me I'm being eavesdropped.