Apple Watch and Camera

[Fatyank]

I wanted to put this out for a long time but never did. When I was growing up in the 60s, I watched a lot of the Dick Tracy cartoons and loved his wrist radio. I always thought how cool it would be to have a thing like that. Well here we are 60 years later and guess what, we do!!

The watch is an amazing device and I, like many other watch owners, spend more and more on time the watch and leave the phone at home or at least in the car while doing our daily whatever it is we do. There is however one thing I would love to see in future watches and wanted to throw my idea out to get feedback. I’m not a tech engineer of any sort, just like to use all the tech gadgets. I use my watch to tell time, listen to music, pay for stuff at most places, calendar, phone, text, email etc..... The one thing missing is a camera. This idea is probably out there somewhere but I haven’t seen it. Now let me say PLEASE let’s not start a pissing contest about cost. I know it would be a lot. I’m looking for comments on feasibility.

Here is my idea. The lense would be at the top of the watch above the bracelet facing away from the wearer. It would work for left or right hand wearers. The crown would act as a focal or digital zoom. There will be a Camera App on the watch that when open displays on the watch face what the lense is seeing. On the watch face there will be a small red button for camera shutter release. I thought about the crown but realized pushing the crown would likely move your wrist ever so slightly as to blur your photo. Tapping on the screen/watch face should prevent this. The red button would of course not show up in your photo. I believe video could be added to this also since everything is digital. You could create a folder on your phone to sync photos you’ve taken during the day and they will be stored on both the watch and phone. I’ve attached a crude, let me say very crude drawing of my idea.

Thoughts please and dont be afraid to have a laugh at my art work. 😂😂😂. We all need a little cheering up these days.

 

[throAU]

But why?

You already have a far better camera on the iphone you need to use the watch.

If its to surreptitiously take photos of people in secret... well.... no.

 

[Fatyank]

No I don‘t have a need to spy on people. I have become very dependent on just my watch. I do a daily 5 mile walk (I’m in Arizona). I don’t carry my phone and there are times I would like to grab a snapshot of something or maybe I’m in a store and need to verify with my wife what she wants me to buy. I take a pic and text to her. Better to check than bring the wrong item home 😱I realize the iphone camera is superior but this would be good for the occasional snapshot

 

[44267547]

I’m not trying to be negative, [As this topic seems to surface once in a while]. There’s no need for a camera on a smart watch, and it probably would go against Apple’s privacy beliefs in terms of even implementing something like this.

The Reality is, A Camera on a smart watch doesn’t really add any true functionality to something that the user wouldn’t resort to their iPhone in the first place. Plus, it would also probably add to the thickness of the Apple Watch, and detract away from the battery life as well.

My thoughts are, if Apple wanted to implement a Camera on a smart watch, they would’ve done it already. It just really doesn’t add any real value/substance to the Apple Watch moving forward, when Focus is health advancements and micro LED eventually.

 

[Itinj24]

My first smart watch, the Samsung Gear, had an integrated camera that could also take 15 second video. I found it very useful especially for visual memos when my phone wasn’t within reach. The issue with that one was that the camera was integrated into the watch band. I believe the successor had it integrated into the case of the watch though.

There are going to be people that don’t understand the utility of such a feature and I’ll bet the majority of those are the ones that don’t have cellular watches. The claim that they always have their phone close by is common. I can respect that but I advocate cellular watches because there may be an unforeseen circumstance when the phone may not be close by. The smart watch then instantly becomes dumb. A backup camera would be great.

Then you have the ones nervous about a “spy cam.” There are so many cameras around these days, hidden or in plain sight, so just assume you’re being recorded every time you step out in public. Besides if you’re out in public, you lose that privacy. Nobody is shy to pull out their phones and record anything anymore and there are plenty of websites out there to post the videos to. Does it really matter?

I would love to see a camera on the Apple Watch but I don’t think it will ever happen. Maybe a FaceTime camera at the most but that too is a stretch.