Hey guys,
So I've been using watchOS 2 Beta 1 since it was available to download OTA and I'll also be doing the same thing in video form on my YouTube channel if you're into that.
Keep in mind that this is what I've gathered from using watchOS 2 over the past 5 days so certinally nothing in depth.
Installation
When I was installing watchOS 2, I was excited but at the same time I was super scared as to how it was going to turn out. Would it all install without a hitch? Would it brick? Looking back on it, I dont even know what I was getting myself into.
Installation requires that you install a configuration profile on your iPhone & Apple Watch which both result in restarts after you successfuly install the profile on both devices. This is to ensure that you agree to watchOS beta running on your watch and so it allows you to actually download beta software (Kinda like how you might tick the box in your GPU software saying "Download updates that are beta" or what not)
The watchOS 2 Beta 1 download was roughly 350 MB and took around an hour to download. Installing the watchOS 2 Beta was when things got a little scary. As the watch was installing the beta, it actually bricked at one stage as the ring around the Apple logo was about 3/4 done.
The only reason I can come up with as to why it bricked was that a notification came up on my iPhone throughout the installation saying something like "iCloud can't work without the cloud, plz put in your password so we can function again.."
That took me into the settings app which was when the installation on the watch then bricked.
However, holding down the digital crown and friends buttion for ten seconds restarted the watch and continued the installation which then finished up without error.
First Impressions
Using watchOS 2 Beta 1 for the first few minutes was surpisingly pleasent to say the least. Nothing was crashing, frame rate was high and opening apps was really fast... until it all went sour. Of course in doing this update, I reset my watch beforehand so I could have a clean slate for the beta so this meant that all my data was wiped. Now that wasn't a big deal for me as I knew that most of my data would just sync back to the watch from the phone but then I realised that this is a beta and nothing was going to go to plan.
The new additons to watchOS 2 such as Time Travel, being able to select multiple colors for single drawings in digital touch, improvments to Siri & more are cool and all but I really have no one to test those features with. Even with third party complications for example, there are no third party complications even out yet which I'd like to use with the Time Travel feature.
I upgraded to watchOS 2 to test out the three main features that caught my eye... Nightstand Mode, Timelapse watch face & Photos watch face.
Nightstand Mode (although stupid and pointless to some) is simply stunning while at the same time, sticking to a simplistic layout. My bedside tables are pretty close to the edge of my bed and my watch is right at the edge of the beside table so it's pretty easy to just roll over in bed to interact with in the morning without having to stretch.
When the alarm goes off, the display lights up and I can easily see, even without opening my eyes too much, what the time is, the name of the alarm and the charge level of my watch which are all big pros in my book. Snoozing the alarm or turning it off is also easy. Sure, some prefer a traditonal alarm clock with big buttons so they can just whack the button to turn off their alarm without looking at it, but in my case, a nice on screen display of which button does what to alter what the alarm does is also a big pro for me as I know what the button I just pressed is actually going to do. The only thing I was dissapointed with was the sound of the alarm as Apple seemed to show off a new alarm sound for Apple Watch alarms which isn't present in this beta version of watchOS.
Next is the new watch faces which include the Timelapse watch face, Single Photo watch face and the Photo Album watch face. These three complication free watch faces all require personal input to reflect your own feelings.
The Timelapse watch face includes a few popular locations such as London, New York, Shanghai, etc.
I've never been to any of these places in my life but all these timelapses really do show a vibrant landscape. In fact, I've been finding myself looking at the New York timelapse during the day when I'm out and about either at school, down the street and then looking at the London timelapse at night where I'll look at my watch to see not only the time but also being able to see Big Ben light up as the sun sets at a rapid speed. It's beautiful and brings a smile to my face every now and then. A little change here for me personally would be making the time and date on this watch face a little bit bigger.
The Single Photo & Photo Album watch face provides an even more personal input by you the user. Although I don't personally see the point in having pictures of my loved ones on my 42mm screen, I can see why others would use this watch face. Maybe you just created a seperate album in your photos app to put all the photos into from that holiday you just went on. You have this album synced to your watch and you set your watch to the Photo Album watch face for the next week or so, so that everytime you look at your watch over the next week, you have a new image everytime to look at to recap on the awesome holiday you were just on. Dumb to some... Sentimental to others...
Bugzzzzzz! (Bugs)
Every beta has a fair share of bugs. The bugs I've picked up on are...
- The Stocks App just outright, doesn't work and only displays the Yahoo logo when you open it up.
[UPDATE: Stocks works when you ask Siri about a specific stock but the Stocks App just doesn't work]
- My weather temperature was set to Fahrenheit for some reason. It didn't switch to Celsius on demand when I specifically tapped on the button in the app to change it. It changed back to Celsius eventually... one and a half days later...
- The Timelapse watch face sometimes lags when playing the timelapse upon activation of the screen or sometimes, it won't play the timelapse at all and just shows a still image.
- Sometime's the watch thinks my current location is the "South Atlantic Ocean" :/
- Maps is very on and off and sometimes takes longer than watchOS 1.0 did to load map data.
- There's a new AirPlay option in the settings glance that doesn't work yet.
- Sometimes the notification sound will play five to ten seconds after the notification has actually poped up.
- The Taptic Engine sometimes doesn't work at all (same with the watch speaker) [A restart usually fixes this problem]
- Contacts are no longer synced to my watch! This is the bug that is driving me nuts the most.
- Siri is pretty slow when trying to activate on demand or sometimes will just give up.
- Voice dictation when replying to a message for example also takes ages to activate on demand.
- Weather info sometimes took longer than two minutes to finally display.
- Third Party Apps take longer than usual to install or may flat out just not even bother to install.
- The new complications section in the Apple Watch App on iPhone doesn't work yet and shows a constant loading icon.
- Seriously Apple... where's the learn to dance like Eddy Cue video? Disappointed xD
Conclusion
For the first Apple Watch beta ever, things are looking pretty good for whats to come. Sure, there are a few bugs but with all these new features to test out before official release and watchOS 2 Beta 2 probably a few weeks away, I'd say you should jump on the beta wagon... if you're a developer. This is in no way for the average consumer! Trust me, you may end up bricking your watch! xD
So I've been using watchOS 2 Beta 1 since it was available to download OTA and I'll also be doing the same thing in video form on my YouTube channel if you're into that.
Keep in mind that this is what I've gathered from using watchOS 2 over the past 5 days so certinally nothing in depth.
Installation
When I was installing watchOS 2, I was excited but at the same time I was super scared as to how it was going to turn out. Would it all install without a hitch? Would it brick? Looking back on it, I dont even know what I was getting myself into.
Installation requires that you install a configuration profile on your iPhone & Apple Watch which both result in restarts after you successfuly install the profile on both devices. This is to ensure that you agree to watchOS beta running on your watch and so it allows you to actually download beta software (Kinda like how you might tick the box in your GPU software saying "Download updates that are beta" or what not)
The watchOS 2 Beta 1 download was roughly 350 MB and took around an hour to download. Installing the watchOS 2 Beta was when things got a little scary. As the watch was installing the beta, it actually bricked at one stage as the ring around the Apple logo was about 3/4 done.
The only reason I can come up with as to why it bricked was that a notification came up on my iPhone throughout the installation saying something like "iCloud can't work without the cloud, plz put in your password so we can function again.."
That took me into the settings app which was when the installation on the watch then bricked.
However, holding down the digital crown and friends buttion for ten seconds restarted the watch and continued the installation which then finished up without error.
First Impressions
Using watchOS 2 Beta 1 for the first few minutes was surpisingly pleasent to say the least. Nothing was crashing, frame rate was high and opening apps was really fast... until it all went sour. Of course in doing this update, I reset my watch beforehand so I could have a clean slate for the beta so this meant that all my data was wiped. Now that wasn't a big deal for me as I knew that most of my data would just sync back to the watch from the phone but then I realised that this is a beta and nothing was going to go to plan.
The new additons to watchOS 2 such as Time Travel, being able to select multiple colors for single drawings in digital touch, improvments to Siri & more are cool and all but I really have no one to test those features with. Even with third party complications for example, there are no third party complications even out yet which I'd like to use with the Time Travel feature.
I upgraded to watchOS 2 to test out the three main features that caught my eye... Nightstand Mode, Timelapse watch face & Photos watch face.
Nightstand Mode (although stupid and pointless to some) is simply stunning while at the same time, sticking to a simplistic layout. My bedside tables are pretty close to the edge of my bed and my watch is right at the edge of the beside table so it's pretty easy to just roll over in bed to interact with in the morning without having to stretch.
When the alarm goes off, the display lights up and I can easily see, even without opening my eyes too much, what the time is, the name of the alarm and the charge level of my watch which are all big pros in my book. Snoozing the alarm or turning it off is also easy. Sure, some prefer a traditonal alarm clock with big buttons so they can just whack the button to turn off their alarm without looking at it, but in my case, a nice on screen display of which button does what to alter what the alarm does is also a big pro for me as I know what the button I just pressed is actually going to do. The only thing I was dissapointed with was the sound of the alarm as Apple seemed to show off a new alarm sound for Apple Watch alarms which isn't present in this beta version of watchOS.
Next is the new watch faces which include the Timelapse watch face, Single Photo watch face and the Photo Album watch face. These three complication free watch faces all require personal input to reflect your own feelings.
The Timelapse watch face includes a few popular locations such as London, New York, Shanghai, etc.
I've never been to any of these places in my life but all these timelapses really do show a vibrant landscape. In fact, I've been finding myself looking at the New York timelapse during the day when I'm out and about either at school, down the street and then looking at the London timelapse at night where I'll look at my watch to see not only the time but also being able to see Big Ben light up as the sun sets at a rapid speed. It's beautiful and brings a smile to my face every now and then. A little change here for me personally would be making the time and date on this watch face a little bit bigger.
The Single Photo & Photo Album watch face provides an even more personal input by you the user. Although I don't personally see the point in having pictures of my loved ones on my 42mm screen, I can see why others would use this watch face. Maybe you just created a seperate album in your photos app to put all the photos into from that holiday you just went on. You have this album synced to your watch and you set your watch to the Photo Album watch face for the next week or so, so that everytime you look at your watch over the next week, you have a new image everytime to look at to recap on the awesome holiday you were just on. Dumb to some... Sentimental to others...
Bugzzzzzz! (Bugs)
Every beta has a fair share of bugs. The bugs I've picked up on are...
- The Stocks App just outright, doesn't work and only displays the Yahoo logo when you open it up.
[UPDATE: Stocks works when you ask Siri about a specific stock but the Stocks App just doesn't work]
- My weather temperature was set to Fahrenheit for some reason. It didn't switch to Celsius on demand when I specifically tapped on the button in the app to change it. It changed back to Celsius eventually... one and a half days later...
- The Timelapse watch face sometimes lags when playing the timelapse upon activation of the screen or sometimes, it won't play the timelapse at all and just shows a still image.
- Sometime's the watch thinks my current location is the "South Atlantic Ocean" :/
- Maps is very on and off and sometimes takes longer than watchOS 1.0 did to load map data.
- There's a new AirPlay option in the settings glance that doesn't work yet.
- Sometimes the notification sound will play five to ten seconds after the notification has actually poped up.
- The Taptic Engine sometimes doesn't work at all (same with the watch speaker) [A restart usually fixes this problem]
- Contacts are no longer synced to my watch! This is the bug that is driving me nuts the most.
- Siri is pretty slow when trying to activate on demand or sometimes will just give up.
- Voice dictation when replying to a message for example also takes ages to activate on demand.
- Weather info sometimes took longer than two minutes to finally display.
- Third Party Apps take longer than usual to install or may flat out just not even bother to install.
- The new complications section in the Apple Watch App on iPhone doesn't work yet and shows a constant loading icon.
- Seriously Apple... where's the learn to dance like Eddy Cue video? Disappointed xD
Conclusion
For the first Apple Watch beta ever, things are looking pretty good for whats to come. Sure, there are a few bugs but with all these new features to test out before official release and watchOS 2 Beta 2 probably a few weeks away, I'd say you should jump on the beta wagon... if you're a developer. This is in no way for the average consumer! Trust me, you may end up bricking your watch! xD
Last edited:
