Apple Executives Discuss Optimizations for Larger Apple Watch Series 7 Display, Lack of Third-Party Watch Faces

[happydude]

The vast majority of people don't use a watch for 24 Hours straight.

disagree. and by "use" - that should also count for monitoring heart rate overnight in addition to tracking sleep. apple has made a watch with the intent that it is worn all day and night if you want to take full advantage of its capabilities...without a battery strong enough to sustain it all day and all night.

Garmin, suunto, coros...there's so many options for a smart watch that tracks activities, health, sleep, heart rate, irregular heart beat...apple is just so concerned with looks they sacrifice basic function.

 

[xgman]

the faces are the weakest link.. just bleh...

 

[4jasontv]

disagree. and by "use" - that should also count for monitoring heart rate overnight in addition to tracking sleep. apple has made a watch with the intent that it is worn all day and night if you want to take full advantage of its capabilities...without a battery strong enough to sustain it all day and all night.

Garmin, suunto, coros...there's so many options for a smart watch that tracks activities, health, sleep, heart rate, irregular heart beat...apple is just so concerned with looks they sacrifice basic function.

In Apple's defense, that makes their watch unique. None of the other brands appear to be making aesthetics a priority.

 

[happydude]

Wore mine yesterday for 23 hours straight and still had 50% battery.

but as soon as you use it for a workout - like their battery life description on their site says with an hour's workout tracking, lifetime is 18 hours. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/

unacceptable. sure if you don't use any feature, I guess it'll last long. but what's the point. I'd rather stick with a basic timex if all I'm concerned with is what time of day it is.

but if I want to go for a run, track my heart rate, track my sleep, use any of the apps, etc then I'm needing to recharge. and have to either carry with me the charger or buy another for work to give it a boost to get home. no thanks. and that battery is going to show serious decay within a year. and their planned obsolescence whether it be needing a phone with consistent software updates, the watch updates...my previous Apple Watch became frustrating to use after a year for terrible battery and after 2 years when it couldn't keep up with new os updates.

until they take the battery life issue seriously, never again. Garmin, suunto, coros...just about any other smart watch out there will last 1000% longer at minimum.

 

[MauiPa]

all design and no attention to battery life. less than 24 hours in today's world is ridiculous.

I get 2 full days on mine. that includes 7/24 wear because I am monitoring a heart issue, and a bout of daily exercise, that includes walking or running for up to 8 miles - blood oxygen sensing, heart rate monitoring, tracking my route, the usual averages, speed, etc. It even shows me which side of the street I was walking on - cool, but not necessary. so yah, sorry, your narrative is a bit stale

I can certainly see some people want different stuff, but if you give up a lot to get extra battery life, well, you just gave up a lot

 

[happydude]

In Apple's defense, that makes their watch unique. None of the other brands appear to be making aesthetics a priority.

and they've been able to convince millions of people it's worth shelling out hundreds (or thousands as the suckers who bought the obsolete gold version?) for form over function. I mean, capitalism at its best. go get it apple. but I'd prefer my now 3 year old Garmin that still does everything it's advertised to do and still has a 2 week battery life.

 

[MauiPa]

but as soon as you use it for a workout - like their battery life description on their site says with an hour's workout tracking, lifetime is 18 hours. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/

unacceptable. sure if you don't use any feature, I guess it'll last long. but what's the point. I'd rather stick with a basic timex if all I'm concerned with is what time of day it is.

but if I want to go for a run, track my heart rate, track my sleep, use any of the apps, etc then I'm needing to recharge. and have to either carry with me the charger or buy another for work to give it a boost to get home. no thanks. and that battery is going to show serious decay within a year. and their planned obsolescence whether it be needing a phone with consistent software updates, the watch updates...my previous Apple Watch became frustrating to use after a year for terrible battery and after 2 years when it couldn't keep up with new os updates.

until they take the battery life issue seriously, never again. Garmin, suunto, coros...just about any other smart watch out there will last 1000% longer at minimum.

Nope! you are wrong. I get 2 days from mine, including 7/24 wear, and 2 days of work outs and distance tracking

 

[MauiPa]

It's a tool - if it does the job well then it's fine if it's boring.

my tooth brush is the same way. Every year I get a new one, does the job just fine, but it is the same. I guess I just like a watch to be a watch, and phone, and map, and Siri responder, and timer, and remote control for my appleTV and Honepods, and Music player, and......

 

[happydude]

I get 2 full days on mine. that includes 7/24 wear because I am monitoring a heart issue, and a bout of daily exercise, that includes walking or running for up to 8 miles - blood oxygen sensing, heart rate monitoring, tracking my route, the usual averages, speed, etc. It even shows me which side of the street I was walking on - cool, but not necessary. so yah, sorry, your narrative is a bit stale

I can certainly see some people want different stuff, but if you give up a lot to get extra battery life, well, you just gave up a lot

their own site claims 18 hours what what you've described. glad you're getting more out of it than they engineered possible, or claim. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/ I'll take apple's own claims over anecdotal evidence. and anecdotally, I have a friend with the AW 7 that doesn't last 18 hours with an hour long run mid day. but he's happy with it. good for him and you.

my own history with the apple watch is nothing but a terrible battery that decays quickly over time and then can't keep up with software updates in a couple years. my Garmin going on 3 years lasts 2 weeks on a single charge - with gps tracking of many many hours of running.

 

[Tagbert]

interesting, no mention of sensors, health ... just display ...

That was really the only change for this version. None of the new rumored sensor were ready.

 

[Tagbert]

all design and no attention to battery life. less than 24 hours in today's world is ridiculous.

Is it really less than 24 hours? My series 4 always was getting 30 hours or so until recently when the battery seems to be on the decline. I know that Apple only lists 18 hours, but that was never my experience.

 

[Tagbert]

Apple is a premium brand, and I genuinely feel they just don’t want people seeing an Apple Watch with a face that looks like it was created by a colourblind kindergarten kid with a head-wand

I would welcome if Apple were to include watch faces from vetted 3rd parties that know something about watch design. Definitely don't want a bunch of garbage from people who just throw something together.

 

[happydude]

Is it really less than 24 hours? My series 4 always was getting 30 hours or so until recently when the battery seems to be on the decline. I know that Apple only lists 18 hours, but that was never my experience.

I'm going off what apple says. and a friend who's doesn't last 18 hours when he gets his midday workout in. others have replied saying it gets almost 2 days.

realistically, even 2 days pales in comparison to competitors. but to each their own. my big gripe is that I loved my first Apple Watch when I got it but the battery life seriously limited the joy I'd get. and when it wouldn't last a 4 hour marathon after a year I was done. curious what other "real world" users say, but even at top end - 30 hours even for the AW, it just doesn't cut it - for me.

 

[bluespark]

If Apple want to retain control of watch faces, it should offer a *lot* more of them, should partner with famous designers to create faces, and should work to give us more ability to automate which face comes up in particular situations. There is a ton of innovation that could happen in this space, and that would improve the experience.

 

[Tagbert]

but as soon as you use it for a workout - like their battery life description on their site says with an hour's workout tracking, lifetime is 18 hours. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/

unacceptable. sure if you don't use any feature, I guess it'll last long. but what's the point. I'd rather stick with a basic timex if all I'm concerned with is what time of day it is.

but if I want to go for a run, track my heart rate, track my sleep, use any of the apps, etc then I'm needing to recharge. and have to either carry with me the charger or buy another for work to give it a boost to get home. no thanks. and that battery is going to show serious decay within a year. and their planned obsolescence whether it be needing a phone with consistent software updates, the watch updates...my previous Apple Watch became frustrating to use after a year for terrible battery and after 2 years when it couldn't keep up with new os updates.

until they take the battery life issue seriously, never again. Garmin, suunto, coros...just about any other smart watch out there will last 1000% longer at minimum.

Maybe the later watches suffer because of the always on display, but on my S4 I was always getting well over 24 hours with a hour a day of exercise tracking or running tracking and also sleep tracking. I do have most notifications turned off and it's not cellular.

 

[CarlJ]

If you look closely, the watch hands are always drawn exactly the same way, despite the fact that they show up in different colors. We think we struck a really good balance.

If I look closely (or not so closely), what I consistently notice is that the hands are always drawn OVER EVERYTHING ELSE displayed within the watch dial. Apple is too slavishly copying limits imposed by physical hands on a watch. For many faces, if there are complications in the dial, as opposed to in the corners, there's no good reason why the hands can't move behind the complications, so the information is always visible.

As it is now, want to know what the date is? Oh, sorry, it's 15 minutes past the hour, you can't see it now - try back in five minutes (which is utterly ridiculous). On a physical/mechanical analog watch, this is an unfortunate consequence of limits in the mechanism, that the hands necessarily travel above the complications - on a virtual watch face that's entirely comprised of pixels, this limit is positively maddening. Why, Apple, why? It's like if someone designed a car and slavishly imposed all the limits that were inherent in horse-drawn carriages, saying at every step of the process, "well, you have to do it this way, because that's how it works on horse-drawn carriages".

There are so many possibilities for new ways of showing time that Apple hasn't explored - hasn't even touched. The Solar Dial is one tiny step in that direction, but it's awfully busy, and kind of fails at the "instantly get a feeling for what time it is" test.

If they ever do release a WatchFaceKit API, I'll write my own Watch faces (not to sell, just to use), and I'll be a lot happier with the Apple Watch. I like it now, but I'd love it if I could control the whole display (and no, not with an app or complication, I need something that updates as often as Apple's watch faces).

The watch faces themselves, they provide a canvas for third parties for sure, and a template that they can [use to] create multiple complications and turn a watch face into their watch face, and that becomes the interface in some ways for their application.

This sounds so much like, "you don't (real) need apps, we're supporting 'web apps', that developers can write to use with the iPhone" - back when Apple was caught kind of flat-footed by the need for an App Store - I guess they figured everyone would be completely satisfied with just the built-in apps. They tried to put a brave face on it, or they genuinely believed that their built-in apps were all that anyone would want. It seems now that they genuinely believe that their built-in watch faces are all that anyone could want - or that they are better arbiters of style and usefulness than anyone else. Sigh.

 

[Arsenikdote]

To me it's a dodge. They explained they wanted the control but didn't explain why they wouldn't allow other designers to provide different options.

I am not trying to be "that guy" but they did explain why they wouldn't allow other designers to provide different options. It was to control their brand. What they didn't do was explain why each reason someone could come up with goes against controlling their brand. Example: This design goes against our brand because it does XYZ. But the primary factor, or reason, is because it is a form of brand control. They did dodge the the specifics of how other people designing watch faces would loose brand control for sure. But we now know without any doubt that the reason we don't have third party watch faces is due to Apple desiring the branding that the watch face design provides. (right or wrong)

 

[Arsenikdote]

unsure what you're getting at. but their own site mentions "up to 18 hours" - that's just not acceptable. I don't want a watch I have to recharge just to go to bed, or to recharge after a workout, or to recharge in the middle of the day. I don't want to buy an extra charger to have at work to give it a boost to last until I get home. and from my own experience, that 18 hour max lifetime will significantly decay over time. it's just ridiculous they can't get that battery life up. almost every other smart watch maker has weeks, if not days, of a battery life. this is the one apple product I just can't get behind.

That makes more sense.

For perspective, my Apple Watch series 4 still lasts me from the time I get up in the morning and take it off the charger, until I go to bed at night. I typically do 1-2 hour workout and always use the workout app on the watch. I don't use GPS for the workout, but my wife on her series 4 does when she runs and gets the same battery life. Our watches are using the original batteries (3 year old). So while I am sure there is battery decay on a 3 year old battery, it still works great! I typically end the day with ~20% battery. If I don't run a two hour workout I end with ~30-40%

Note: I don't often make phone calls on my watch, I would assume that would be a significant battery drain.

And I mean....you have to charge your device at some point. Maybe one day when we have OTA charging you won't, but for now you have to. So if you want to use it all day, and you want to sleep with it at night, when practically do you charge it? Apple implemented fast charging to help with this very thing and for people who want to sleep with it. During the keynote they said that a 8 min charge will provide enough battery to last the entire night of sleep tracking. Also, it will charge from 0-85% in 45 minutes. So likely if battery is anything like my 3 year old device, I can put the watch on the charger while I brush my teeth and get ready for bed, take it off and sleep with it. In the morning, put it on the charger while I shower and get ready for work, and likely be at 100% when I walk out the door. Seems very reasonable.

The problem with comparing the Apple Watch to other smart wearables is when you start looking at what uses battery on each device and what you get out of that battery usage. Meaning, are you using it as a phone? How much do you use GPS? Do you use it as a mini-phone or are you mostly just checking the time? I tried to find a study I read a year or so ago, but they basically took devices from a bunch of different MFG's and compared them directly to the same set of tasks. The battery life surprisingly was mostly even across the board. For example, almost every device tracking with GPS had the same exact power consumption so it just came down to how much mAh was put into the device. But other tasks such as notifications and texting was severely specific to the device, suggesting that chip and software efficiency was more important than battery size.

But in the end I understand better that you are looking for "more" than what the current Apple Watch provides. I hope they keep adding to the battery life as well! For me its because that means they can keep adding more features that use battery since it lasts plenty for me, for others like you, you will have your own reasons for wanting more battery capacity!

 

[Robert.Walter]

Am I the only one who wants to completely turn off the watch hands? Specifically, on the Infograph face, the watch hands offer no value whatsoever to me, and in fact, cover the digital time display or other complications completely for an amount of time per day.
The Infograph face is the most useful to me because it offers the most amount of complications but in no shape way or form do those hands actually add any value to the face (for me.)
Example (note how the hands completely cover the Messages and will all other central complications, including digital time.)
I wish we had an option to turn the watch hands OFF, at least on certain faces.
View attachment 1879274

Or a switch to put the hands on a layer behind all the rest of what’s on the dial. And a slider to determine hand transparency.

Dim hands in the background could be a wonderful thing.

 

[votdfak]

The vast majority of people don't use a watch for 24 Hours straight.

They would if they could...

 

[JM]

They forgot to mention how the new watchOS looks terrible on anything BUT the Watch 7.

“Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but it was a very genius and big-brained move that we did to encourage people to upgrade when they look at how terrible their Apple Watch 6 looks now. Nobody wants to see giant oversized graphical elements on their old, pathetic tiny-screen watches.”

 

[Apple_Robert]

"Dye said that despite the extra screen space, Apple still views the Apple Watch as a device intended to be used briefly, just like the original 2015 model:"

I think Dye is out to lunch with his remark. I didn't buy the Apple Watch to use briefly etc.

 

[4jasontv]

and they've been able to convince millions of people it's worth shelling out hundreds (or thousands as the suckers who bought the obsolete gold version?) for form over function. I mean, capitalism at its best. go get it apple. but I'd prefer my now 3 year old Garmin that still does everything it's advertised to do and still has a 2 week battery life.

Which Garmin do you have? My S3 is MASSIVE, and for me that was big reason for switching. It really didn’t matter what the battery life was because I didn’t want to wear it.

 

[flur]

but as soon as you use it for a workout - like their battery life description on their site says with an hour's workout tracking, lifetime is 18 hours. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/

unacceptable. sure if you don't use any feature, I guess it'll last long. but what's the point. I'd rather stick with a basic timex if all I'm concerned with is what time of day it is.

but if I want to go for a run, track my heart rate, track my sleep, use any of the apps, etc then I'm needing to recharge. and have to either carry with me the charger or buy another for work to give it a boost to get home. no thanks. and that battery is going to show serious decay within a year. and their planned obsolescence whether it be needing a phone with consistent software updates, the watch updates...my previous Apple Watch became frustrating to use after a year for terrible battery and after 2 years when it couldn't keep up with new os updates.

until they take the battery life issue seriously, never again. Garmin, suunto, coros...just about any other smart watch out there will last 1000% longer at minimum.

Who said I didn’t work out? LOL, it’s not nice to assume. I did, in fact, do 30 minutes of yoga and a 40 minute walk. I suspect it won’t use any additional battery when I get on my bike or go hiking because it’s doing the same thing - HR, GPS, etc.

On previous watches, I’ve seen definite reduction in battery with a 3-hour workout compared to a 1-hour workout or a rest day. But that reduction is maybe 15-30%, which would still have put me at 20% or more after 23 hours. If I didn’t have a day job, I’d be happy to head out for a 3-hour bike ride or hike right now to see how this new 7 does with it, to give you actual numbers, but I’m stuck in my office. ☹️

FWIW, I have a Suunto lying around here somewhere. I have not had a real world experience with Suunto or Garmin, which my husband has, where the battery life has been demonstrably better than what I’m seeing on the AW7. I mean, sure they *market* the watches as having longer life, but in practice, that’s not been my personal experience.

ETA: I also got a ton of notifications, used the timer and several alarms, read email, responded to texts (including several on my walk - it’s a cellular version), used it as a remote to play music, updated my to-do list in Things, checked the weather, turned lights on and off with the home app, etc. Basically all the usual stuff. I use this watch a lot, all day long.

 

[flur]

They forgot to mention how the new watchOS looks terrible on anything BUT the Watch 7.

“Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but it was a very genius and big-brained move that we did to encourage people to upgrade when they look at how terrible their Apple Watch 6 looks now. Nobody wants to see giant oversized graphical elements on their old, pathetic tiny-screen watches.”

Looks fine on my AW5.