By virtue of being programmable with apps it can be the master of all. It has most the same sensors and just needs software improvements. I expect killer sports apps will make nearly as good as any dedicated watch.
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Apple Watch Series 2: A Swimmer's Perspective
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There is a Swimming Strokes section in the Health app on iPhone, and if you drill down all the way to the individual data records, the numbers are in the 5-10 range, so those could be per-lap numbers, but I don't know if it's per-lap or just from whatever the recording interval is.
Great post, Eric. I think I saw your name on the heat sheets at the US Masters Nationals in April. Were you there? I've been using the Pebble Time Steel for a while to track my swims with the swim.com app. It's been working pretty well and gives me much more detailed stats.
Fortunately, the swim.com app for Apple Watch was just released tonight (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swim.com-swimming-workout/id956030704?mt=8)! I won't have time to test it until Monday (I only swim weekday mornings), but I'll be sure to do so. Looks like there's only an option to start and stop the entire workout, but it will automatically detect when you've stopped swimming and count those intervals appropriately (the Pebble app does this as well, although I prefer to manually start/stop using the buttons - the AW doesn't have this option).
Additionally, looks like both the swim.com app and the native Apple functionality can be run simultaneously, so there's nothing to lose!
Fortunately, the swim.com app for Apple Watch was just released tonight (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swim.com-swimming-workout/id956030704?mt=8)! I won't have time to test it until Monday (I only swim weekday mornings), but I'll be sure to do so. Looks like there's only an option to start and stop the entire workout, but it will automatically detect when you've stopped swimming and count those intervals appropriately (the Pebble app does this as well, although I prefer to manually start/stop using the buttons - the AW doesn't have this option).
Additionally, looks like both the swim.com app and the native Apple functionality can be run simultaneously, so there's nothing to lose!
I've swum twice with series 2 and it gave me notice of completion on neither occasions.
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same as series 0
[doublepost=1474685176][/doublepost]Thanks for this great article. Could you recommend a pair of swimming bluetooth earphone to use together with the Apple Watch? Nothing I found seem to be able to stream music from the watch.
Yes it works reasonably well. You can slide screens by wiping your finger, you can tap. It works awesome in the water. Heart rate works well as far as I can tell. I just did a quick 400m swim and I was fairly impressed
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Yes, I can see stroke count per length.
I haven't swam for a while, but I did 400 m tonight and I am stoked!
It shows "stroke count" per 25 m length as "9 or 10" which actually means "18 or 20" I believe since it is showing only my left arm motion. To me, it means the health app is collecting basic data - but surely it will be possible to analyze that data more
The data from the Health app can be exported or subscribed to by other apps, so maybe someone will make some apps that take the data an do the simple math for swim golf and other swim stroke count stuff. Honestly it's been a few years since I have done training with my local triathlon club, but I am feeling really good about the Apple Watch S2 and swimming. What's really nice is that the display is nice and bright, and the touch screen works and heart rate seems to be measured fairly well.
I just noticed (while composing this message actually) that "MySwimPro" app can get the data and analyze. Looks like they already have some abilities to analyze stroke count with the "premium" version of the app. I'll probably go for it and try everything until i figure out what's best.
Over the next few days I'll compare the HR sensor measurement to a self taken carotid pulse maybe just to see if it is getting reasonably accurate HR counts. I bet it does.
The Water Resistance/Proof thing should not be any issue. I'll beat the hell out my watch and use it in the whirlpool and sauna and wash my hair with tons of shampoo and never rinse my watch and never dry it and I doubt I'll break it - we shall see.
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Cool, I will try that app too. I have "myswimpro" installed right now and it can also start a workout apparently.
With iOS 10 and this new Watch S2 and OS, wow - there are LOTS of toys to play with and lots to learn. Oh not to mention the new OS X version as well! Everything is coming together at once and it's shaping up to be pretty amazing!
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Indeed! If I don't get what I want, I'll just get my guys to make me the BuddyTronic swim app with all the bells and whistles I want.
Who knows? Maybe I can make bluetooth LED bars/arrays for inside the goggles or maybe even headphones and have GPS guidance feedback for open water drafting!
Imagine swimming 4K in the Iron Man and having a swarm of Apple Watch people drafting all the way and swimming lines with laser precision!
Even for 1500m open water, i am sure all the zigging and zagging means some swimmers are actually swimming a few hundred meters too far for no reason other than poor sighting technique. With Buddytronic Swim Goggles and an Apple Watch S2 with GPS, you can save energy and swim a perfect line in open water swimming! Sounds feasible? I think it might really work and be possible to cook this one up! Exciting!
Why wait for Apple to create this? Write to them and tell them what you'd like to see in a swimming app (as a Master swimmer)—and/or writer to one of the thousands of app creators. Maybe even someone who swims and understands exactly what you're after. Maybe even you could write it
Yes, I'd say Apple Watch S2 has potential to be the very best. Nobody is going to have such a good bright display as this and with such good touch etc etc. I just got my AW S2 and it's snappier and better. Just imagine having 200 Billion dollars in the bank to fund the Series 3 and on and on. If any real competition comes, and it will maybe - my main guy at the office has a Pebble and likes it a bit - Apple will have the high road. Who knows, maybe Apple can afford to buy out Garmin anyways? AW S2 pretty much IS a dedicated sports watch - and more perhaps. But the sports thing is the "Killer App" everyone has been trying to find. That an proximity unlocking of my powerbook and iPhone - this proximity unlocking is NICE!
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Why wait for Apple to create this? Write to them and tell them what you'd like to see in a swimming app (as a Master swimmer)—and/or writer to one of the thousands of app creators. Maybe even someone who swims and understands exactly what you're after. Maybe even you could write it
Yes, if AW becomes the "go to" watch that every swimmer wants (and I predict they will), I'm betting we shall soon be seeing a whole lot of new BT swimming electronics coming! And yeah, the coach can probably do the iPhone thing instead of the whiteboard. Probably with this convergence we will see the critical point at which we truly can see some benefits that are worthwhile enough that doing it all electronically will be the best way to go.
I think the critical mass will be related to the analysis of each individual swimmer's performance. It's fine to report to the coach and talk about making small changes and see the results on the clock - but now with so much more data it's going to be such a good reinforcement. Discoveries are sure to be made here in swimming! Wow!
Well, that's the thing. In spite of all the talk about sports and ads and such, what Apple is really aiming at here is the largest part of the market: which consists of people who either don't exercise much or do moderate exercise, and would like to be motivated to do more and do better. The watch can give them that as well as messages, maps, phone calls, and Minnie Mouse.
I mean, yes, sure, of course, Apple would be delighted if athletes like you found the AW useful in workouts and wore it in competition. And it's altogether possible—I think highly likely—that independent fitness apps for the watch will be created by pros to give pros what they want and need (maybe you can look into asking some company or person to do this for you?). But if we're talking about Apple's native fitness apps...those have to be for the person who bought the watch to improve their work out as well as receive messages, and summon Uber. And thus, those native apps are likely to fall way short for someone like you.
Apple hasn't created a watch for the super athletic. It's created a smart watch that can help most people improve their fitness...and, in certain instances, be of use to the super athletic.
I now understand - thanks for taking the time to explain a bit more. "resistant" is the way to get out of warranty issues.
Nevertheless I will abuse the hell out of my Apple Watch S2 and see what happens. First one did pretty good. I'm definitely going to shower with it after swims and definitely going to have shampoo around it. It will all be fine, and if I break it, I'll buy another and be "careful" I guess. This stuff becomes junk after a year anyway, and the money I blow on it is a tax deduction for my work as a developer, and good for my health - I need all the motivations I can get to keep the beer belly away. Money can be replaced, but the time it takes to baby my iPhone is a real waste of time. So many guys I see have iPhone 5's in "mint" condition with no scratches - whoop-dee-doo. Mine is covered with scratches and worth 50 bucks less usually so I never understood why people want to keep the precious iPhone so pristine - same for the watch, and same for anything that doesn't have a beating heart inside
Just my way of looking at it.Burning more than 500 calories in an hour is not so easy, at least not if you do sports at a moderate recreational level. What he burns swimming is about right for the pace he is at. I swim 2 miles in one hour, wich is more than 10 minutes faster than he is and I am certainly not one of the really fast ones in the pool. The swim team people probably burn 600-1000 calories an hour depending on the exercises they do.
Very nice. I just downloaded the iPhone and Watch swim.com apps. Will give it a try.
Do you know if the swim.com app can display heart rate as well?
True that - not many humans can burn 1000 calories in 1 hour - just can't put out enough watts to do it. If you can - you are an elite
I hate when Apple offers limited information, it looks like the Apple Watch has an ISO ATM certification. It took me a while to find this.. the Apple Watch is certified as ATM 5 - up to 50 meters, the highest is ATM 20 - up to 200 meters, but still no info about water dust
I love what Samsung did with Galaxy S7 Active! the phone has two certifications - IP68 and MIL-STD-810G. Apple should do the same thing next time, if they want to sell products to pro swimmers!
Yeah, I guess only the top athletes are even able to get up to a 1000 calories per hour burn. It would be interesting to know, if the 5 k and 10 k open water swimmers are reaching that count, since they are the only ones who do swim an almost one or two hour swim race. But I doubt that they get over 800. Those guys swim 5 k in 55 minutes in open water with waves, wind and current.
Clearly you are neither a runner or swimmer or you wouldn't make such a silly statement. The Garmin Forerunners, esp the 630 is leaps and bounds better for serious runners. These are serious watches for people in traning, not just wanting to track their movement and what their heart rate was a minute ago. The amount real time and post-run data dedicated running watches give makes AW look like a Happy Meal giveaway. But Suuntos are great too, esp for off road running. I'm not a swimmer, so I'll let someone else take up that topic.
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Except that it doesn't. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, and all that. It just doesn't do what dedicated sports watches do right now, and have been doing for the past few years. Apple has not caught up, you are correct. The AW you can buy TODAY is out of the leauge with dedicated sport watches. I do hope Apple catches up and surpases, but that isn't the case TODAY.
This is a good idea, and I'm an app developer!Why wait for Apple to create this? Write to them and tell them what you'd like to see in a swimming app (as a Master swimmer)—and/or writer to one of the thousands of app creators. Maybe even someone who swims and understands exactly what you're after. Maybe even you could write it
How weird is the speaker water clearing process?
After selling my fenix, I'm thinking I need something better than the Apple Watch Series 1. Maybe a Vivosmart HR. The Series 2 is so new, I haven't seen any reviews of it is an activity tracker. It still doesn't interface with other sensors, right?
After selling my fenix, I'm thinking I need something better than the Apple Watch Series 1. Maybe a Vivosmart HR. The Series 2 is so new, I haven't seen any reviews of it is an activity tracker. It still doesn't interface with other sensors, right?
Uh, The Garman 910 for starters. As a triathlete I have been wearing that for my training and racing for more then 5 years. I take my Apple Watch off in the pool so that I can monitor my metrics as I swim. However I am looking forward to the Apple Watch series 2 that I have ordered to be able to just wear that during my training. During races I will still continue to wear my Garman 910.
The short answer is yes, but I will say that it is very difficult to perceive the taptic alert while swimming. I have tested this multiple times. It appears to provide a rather short single thump and thats it. When specifically expecting it and waiting for it, I only barely felt it one time out of 4. For most this is a problem because you do not want to keep pausing to look at the display, and furthermore, at least for me, I want my mind to veg out and just swim. I swim for fitness and distance for calories only. I like to split my swim into ⅓ segments to stop and drink branch chain amino acids. I imagine others would want to be alerted every n number of laps to change strokes etc. These kinds of alerts are needed, but are not available. We need to be able to pre program a swim by the available goals of time, distance, or calories and we need to be able to schedule alerts during that swim based on time, distance or calories. I have written to Apple feedback to suggest this.
The alerts during a swim activity need to be changed to be longer. I have been using a work around. Looking at my average swim times per ⅓ segment, I average 3 x 36 minute segments. So I go to the countdown timer in the watch and set a 36 minute timer, then I start my swim with a combined goal of all three segments. Then I tune out and swim. When the timer alert goes off, it persists until stopped and it will eventually get my attention fairly quickly. When this alert is active the screen displays the dismiss button, but it is locked. The crown and side button will not pause the swim while the alert is active. I unlock the screen by twisting the digital crown, dismiss the alert, and then the swim screen comes up and I use the crown and side button to pause the workout. After my quick drink is complete, I set another count down timer, go back to activity, and lock the screen with the water droplet icon and the depress the crown and side button to resume. This is the best way I know how to do this. If anyone has other suggestions, please post.
I also would add that I used a lap counter previously and I validated the watch's lap accuracy for my swim and its 100% accurate for me. However, it does have some things to note. If you stop and pause your activity, it will not show you latest lap. It appears to wait for the wall kick off to increment. However, if you end your workout, it does appear to add the last lap. One can see how this might be a problem, or a consideration for lap number based alerts. They would need to be smart enough based on last lap count and strokes to anticipate the alert lap completion to trigger an alert so you could pause or change stroke etc in time prior to the wall.
Thanks for the review! Much appreciated. Sadly, this review confirmed some of the suspicions I had about a realible swim watch.
While I'm sure this probably one of the best options, given my nearly 2 decades of competitive swimming, I continue to train like a competitive swimmer- lots of time interval based sets and kick/pull style drills. It's disappointing the Apple Watch cannot adequately register these movements or at least in a convent way. I suppose we can hope that that 3rd party software can better optimize the watch technology.
Furthermore, I'm curious about how the watch responds to varying speeds within the same lap, let's say the first 12.5 yards is full sprint and the last 12.5 is recovery, how well does the watch processes that change in speed in determining the length of the pool? In other words do varying speeds affect the reliability of distance.
Basically conventional earbuds won't work well unless they can form a watertight seal in your ears. The finis models use "bone conduction" to provide more reliable sound. The quality isn't great, but it beats dealing with a tangle of wires. The Finis product clips onto your goggles. The problem I had with the earlier model was reliability (it broke 2-3x before sending it back) and file format comparability.
I've known people to use iPod Shuffles, either specially modified or in a waterproof bag with "waterproof headphones". Typically water gets in the ear-headphone seal of at least one ear, which is annoying. Then you also have to deal with the wires and where you want to put the iPod unit.
If you're looking to stream music from your phone, you're probably not going to be in luck. BT depending on the protocol and environment may not reach from one end of the pool to the other. Perhaps the bigger issue, radio waves don't travel through water too well.
Best bet there is a pool with underwater speakers
[doublepost=1474743357][/doublepost]I suppose my other question for the author is the comfort of the watch in the water. How do you feel it impacts your stoke, if at all. Which band did you use?
I find it a bit frustrating Apple is pushing this as a swimming watch yet many if not most of the watch bands seem appropriate for chlorinated water. The rubber sport bands are probably fine, hopefully they won't dry out. I probably wouldn't go with nylon. Stainless is probably an option, albeit pricey. Leather- absolutely not a good idea.
While I'm sure this probably one of the best options, given my nearly 2 decades of competitive swimming, I continue to train like a competitive swimmer- lots of time interval based sets and kick/pull style drills. It's disappointing the Apple Watch cannot adequately register these movements or at least in a convent way. I suppose we can hope that that 3rd party software can better optimize the watch technology.
Furthermore, I'm curious about how the watch responds to varying speeds within the same lap, let's say the first 12.5 yards is full sprint and the last 12.5 is recovery, how well does the watch processes that change in speed in determining the length of the pool? In other words do varying speeds affect the reliability of distance.
The only decent MP3 player I've ever used for swimming was the Finis SwiMP3, the newest model appears to be the Finis Duo.
Basically conventional earbuds won't work well unless they can form a watertight seal in your ears. The finis models use "bone conduction" to provide more reliable sound. The quality isn't great, but it beats dealing with a tangle of wires. The Finis product clips onto your goggles. The problem I had with the earlier model was reliability (it broke 2-3x before sending it back) and file format comparability.
I've known people to use iPod Shuffles, either specially modified or in a waterproof bag with "waterproof headphones". Typically water gets in the ear-headphone seal of at least one ear, which is annoying. Then you also have to deal with the wires and where you want to put the iPod unit.
If you're looking to stream music from your phone, you're probably not going to be in luck. BT depending on the protocol and environment may not reach from one end of the pool to the other. Perhaps the bigger issue, radio waves don't travel through water too well.
Best bet there is a pool with underwater speakers
[doublepost=1474743357][/doublepost]I suppose my other question for the author is the comfort of the watch in the water. How do you feel it impacts your stoke, if at all. Which band did you use?
I find it a bit frustrating Apple is pushing this as a swimming watch yet many if not most of the watch bands seem appropriate for chlorinated water. The rubber sport bands are probably fine, hopefully they won't dry out. I probably wouldn't go with nylon. Stainless is probably an option, albeit pricey. Leather- absolutely not a good idea.
It does not, but you can run both apps simultaneously so that the AW workout app records your heart rate (and you can switch to it if needed).
Next up: a wireless display in our goggles to feed us this information. I'd pay for that.
I own an original AppleWatch Sport (Series 0) and I spent an entire week on vacation controlling music from my wrist in the pool, and even went snorkelling in the ocean while wearing the Watch. Not a single leak. The salt didn't prove to be a problem, although sand got in around the digital crown but washed out easily.
The Series 2 is officially water resistant up to 50m so if the original could handle it, then so can the new one.