Of course I pre-ordered my Apple Watch immediately upon the widow opening, I always buy every new product they introduce. I purchased the 42mm Sport in silver with white band. I had no expectations going in, just thought it would be fun to get a new Apple product. It's worth mentioning that I've never worn a watch before in my life. In the last 3 days wearing the watch I have grown to really appreciate what it does and can't imaging going back to communicating without it. What follows are my random and lengthy thoughts and opinions in no particular order other than praise first, criticism second.
Praise:
-The number 1 most signifiant aspect that I appreciate: the number of times I take my phone out of my pocket has dropped dramatically, a good estimate would be 80%.
-I'm impressed with Siri, she gets my commands and text right on the watch almost every time. That's far better than Siri on my iPhone 6 Plus.
-The taptic engine is terrific! I never miss a notification now. And it's not that buzzing we have become so accustomed to with our phones. It's a subtle but definitely noticeable tap on my wrist. When using maps on my Watch for navigation yesterday, it gave me 2 different types of taps depending on the direction I was turning. Once familiar with the different taptic notifications I won't even need to look at the watch.
-The screen is magnificent! I expected it to be grainy like every other smartwatch I had seen previously. In fact it's super sharp and I just love looking at it.
-It's great that pulling down the notification panel and swiping up to reveal glances works from anywhere on the screen. When I first got the watch I assumed that the notification panel had to be pulled down from the top and the glances up from the bottom. That made it difficult to do until I realized that it's about the direction you swipe, not from where. I tried it everywhere on the screen and it works just about everywhere, even the extreme opposite corners. NICE!
-The battery life has been terrific! I took it off the charger the first day I used it at 6 AM. When I got home that night at 8 PM I had 50% battery left. And I did not use it sparingly. I sent every text that day from it and played around with many of the functions. I also navigated for 30 minutes that day too! For the record I was at 2/3 brightness (default setting).
-It's very responsive and snappy. Some of the first reviews that came out complained about it being sluggish. NEVER once have I had this happen to me. 3rd party apps do have a loading time, but that is not a critique of the fluidity of the device's OS specifically. Once apps are native to the device this loading time will be history. In overall use it's a seamless pleasure.
-The reviews also criticized the activate on wrist raise feature saying that it worked sporadically. I can't agree. In my experience it works more than 99% of the time, consistently delighting me with this clever function. I have had 2 occasions where I raised it and it came on and immediately turned off. But that was out of 100's of raises that worked flawlessly.
-Charging works flawlessly as well. The magnetic charging piece snaps securely on the back of the watch. I would prefer if it didn't spin but I think they allowed that on purpose for maximum convenience in charging. I definitely see this as the charging method for future Apple devices.
A few minor criticisms:
-There really is a shortage of watch faces at the moment. I'm hoping they open this up to developers which will provide an essentially unlimited selection. Also there are no analog watch faces that seem to be designed for a rectangular watch, they all have a circular appearance. This will all be solved when third party developers get their chance to develop faces.
-The box my 42mm Sport came in seemed overwhelmingly large. I literally couldn't believe how heavy the box was when I received it. When you dive in and see the watch's packaging it becomes clear why. It's beautifully packaged as always but seems unnecessarily large.
-Where's the notes app? I literally couldn't believe this was omitted! I want to tell Siri to create a note, this would be so convenient. It's probably going to be in a future software update.
-Where did the wallpaper option go to set my own photo as the background? Probably dropped at the last minute as a battery saving measure.
So those are my opinions. The positives massively outweigh the negatives. Really it's more like 95% positive and all the negatives I listed make up 5% negative. Most of my negatives are fixable by software anyway, so they won't be around for long.
If you stayed around this long, thank you for reading. I hope this helps someone on the fence about the Watch, it's worth every penny!
Praise:
-The number 1 most signifiant aspect that I appreciate: the number of times I take my phone out of my pocket has dropped dramatically, a good estimate would be 80%.
-I'm impressed with Siri, she gets my commands and text right on the watch almost every time. That's far better than Siri on my iPhone 6 Plus.
-The taptic engine is terrific! I never miss a notification now. And it's not that buzzing we have become so accustomed to with our phones. It's a subtle but definitely noticeable tap on my wrist. When using maps on my Watch for navigation yesterday, it gave me 2 different types of taps depending on the direction I was turning. Once familiar with the different taptic notifications I won't even need to look at the watch.
-The screen is magnificent! I expected it to be grainy like every other smartwatch I had seen previously. In fact it's super sharp and I just love looking at it.
-It's great that pulling down the notification panel and swiping up to reveal glances works from anywhere on the screen. When I first got the watch I assumed that the notification panel had to be pulled down from the top and the glances up from the bottom. That made it difficult to do until I realized that it's about the direction you swipe, not from where. I tried it everywhere on the screen and it works just about everywhere, even the extreme opposite corners. NICE!
-The battery life has been terrific! I took it off the charger the first day I used it at 6 AM. When I got home that night at 8 PM I had 50% battery left. And I did not use it sparingly. I sent every text that day from it and played around with many of the functions. I also navigated for 30 minutes that day too! For the record I was at 2/3 brightness (default setting).
-It's very responsive and snappy. Some of the first reviews that came out complained about it being sluggish. NEVER once have I had this happen to me. 3rd party apps do have a loading time, but that is not a critique of the fluidity of the device's OS specifically. Once apps are native to the device this loading time will be history. In overall use it's a seamless pleasure.
-The reviews also criticized the activate on wrist raise feature saying that it worked sporadically. I can't agree. In my experience it works more than 99% of the time, consistently delighting me with this clever function. I have had 2 occasions where I raised it and it came on and immediately turned off. But that was out of 100's of raises that worked flawlessly.
-Charging works flawlessly as well. The magnetic charging piece snaps securely on the back of the watch. I would prefer if it didn't spin but I think they allowed that on purpose for maximum convenience in charging. I definitely see this as the charging method for future Apple devices.
A few minor criticisms:
-There really is a shortage of watch faces at the moment. I'm hoping they open this up to developers which will provide an essentially unlimited selection. Also there are no analog watch faces that seem to be designed for a rectangular watch, they all have a circular appearance. This will all be solved when third party developers get their chance to develop faces.
-The box my 42mm Sport came in seemed overwhelmingly large. I literally couldn't believe how heavy the box was when I received it. When you dive in and see the watch's packaging it becomes clear why. It's beautifully packaged as always but seems unnecessarily large.
-Where's the notes app? I literally couldn't believe this was omitted! I want to tell Siri to create a note, this would be so convenient. It's probably going to be in a future software update.
-Where did the wallpaper option go to set my own photo as the background? Probably dropped at the last minute as a battery saving measure.
So those are my opinions. The positives massively outweigh the negatives. Really it's more like 95% positive and all the negatives I listed make up 5% negative. Most of my negatives are fixable by software anyway, so they won't be around for long.
If you stayed around this long, thank you for reading. I hope this helps someone on the fence about the Watch, it's worth every penny!
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