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New Touchscreen for 'Apple Watch Series 3' Said to Enter Production Later This Year
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I understand what you're saying. But if you're following a timeline pattern, the first generation Apple Watch launched in April 2015, followed by the second generation Apple Watch in September 2016. That was an 18 month cycle.
If the reports are accurate, the next generation Apple Watch would launch March 2018. Again, and 18 month cycle.
But, I do believe if we see a re-released Apple Watch in September 2017, it's going to be minor improvements in hardware and software. But I can almost guarantee the casing will be exactly the same without any physical changes, perhaps only to the display.
ASide from consumer exhaustion being something to consider, I have zero interest in purchasing the same Apple Watch for three generations. When Apple revamps the Apple Watch or introduces a new style in 2018 purportedly, then I will gladly purchase one or two of the newer models.
It would be good as an option anyway. Going by the other bands prices a battery band would be quite expensive thou..
So far there has only been one cycle so the frequency is not set in stone. The first six months of the first cycle was spent building up production and rolling out the releases in different countries so it wasn't a normal cycle. Sales were rumoured to have tanked in the last six months of that cycle, which they wouldn't want to be repeated over the holiday season.
There's also the next update of WatchOS to consider. If it's previewed at WWDC on June with a projected Autumn release date then there's a good likelihood of a product update at the same time.
I can guarantee you Apple Is going to debut a demo of watchOS Four during WWDC in June. But it doesn't mean that it's gonna be a likelihood of a new Watch being released in September . Actually, last year back in early spring of 2016, it was rumored heavily that an Apple Watch was going to release in June 2016, right around the same time ad WWDC. But that also never happened as well.
Even if they do release a new Apple Watch in September 2017, it doesn't mean that it's going to make up for any lost sales or decline. It seems that either some will upgrade if it's an LTE model or some have said they are not purchasing another watch that has the same attributes as the other ones do.
I'm still leaning on March 2018 for a major revision. Which, the casing, metals and micro LED should be making a debut for the major overhaul with more health sensors.
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In a Touch-On-Lens (TOL) design, the ITO (transparent conductive material that makes up the sensor pattern) is deposited onto the rear surface of the glass front panel that you touch. This has the benefit of having only a single physical layer of glass between the user and the display, so the display is brighter & clearer. It is also useful on larger multi-touch displays as you can make the edge traces thinner on a TOL design, as it is easier to pattern silver onto glass. However, yields are typically a bit lower than a film based design, and costs are slightly higher. Also, as the active layer is part of the front glass, if that is cracked, it can lead to loss of touch function.
A glass-film design (GF) uses a glass front panel that only has decorative print on it (no active circuitry). All the ITO pattern & side traces are printed onto a separate flexible PET layer. This is laminated to the front panel using an optically clear adhesive. The benefits of this are that it's more rugged (damage to the front panel doesn't affect the touchscreen itself), it's cheaper to make, and yields are typically slightly better than TOL or Glass-Glass designs. It's best suited to smaller designes where the side traces are fewer, so there's no problem of them being thicker. However, it does mean the overall distance from where the finger touches the screen to the image on the display itself is larger, as there's more layers. Also, there's a drop in brightness & clarity as you have more layers for the light from the display to go through.
Thanks! Very helpful. So it doesn't sound like it's really a big benefit to the customer ultimately.
No, no real benefit to the user. It's more about manufacturability and unit costings at a production level. If they do this, it's probably to shave a few cents off the BoM...
Then it becomes a medical device and the FDA must approve each version raising the cost by a couple hundred million and delaying the watch by years. Oh, did I mention the lawsuits? Apple should stay far away.
The touchscreen display doesn't... You can control it through the digital crown and multitask button only.
I agree that Apple should up its game but if you compare Alexa to other mobile assistants like Google Now and Cortana, Alexa will always win. Alexa is much "dumber" and has dedicated nice and power just for listening across the room. No mobile device will come close to that for many years so there is no point comparing them. It's like asking for a supercomputer in a laptop platform and then expecting battery life to also be good.
It won't compare to Alexa. But I bet Apple could decide to up the microphone game in its Watch. Same with the iPhone. While everyone is competing for better cameras in smartphones, maybe a set of really good microphones is really what Apple should be focusing on. And for the watch, instead of longer battery life, maybe dual mics is the way to go. Alexa will always have better mics. But the Watch will likely be less than 1 foot from your mouth when you use it, so the competition could be closer than you make it out to be.
I agree that Apple should invest more into their mic systems. If they really take Siri seriously, then they must follow through on that since it's the only way to input into Siri besides the AI in the cloud to discern what is being heard. I remember those AI assistant shoot outs on phones when Siri and Google Now and Cortana. It would be interesting to see similar shootouts between all of the leading smart watches too.
Yeah, it is all about the Mic. The programming is already done. But having to perfectly enunciate every word makes it hard to use. Better mic and Siri will be able to get stuff done.