I’d love to see how many of the people who actually have an S5 think it’s a “sub par” upgrade versus the people who shoot it down while never having tried AOD. Regardless, as I said above the tech that enabled it was not a small increment, and I’ve seen virtually nobody with an S5 saying AOD isn't a great improvement.
The article I read about fingerprint scanning explicitly said it was likely a series 7 rather than series 6 upgrade, which seems a lot more likely to me, especially if it’s going to be under the screen, which I think it has to be. The iPhone has to be a much easier device to add it to as it has plenty of challenges already without the Watch’s lack of space and additional layer in the screen. The iPhone is also the flagship device and would benefit from a fingerprint reader under the glass, so will likely get it first.
I haven’t read anything about car key on the Watch, but I could have missed it, especially if it was embedded in an article about Apple working with BMW on it as I didn’t even read that I care so little (and I say that as someone driving his fifth - but last - BMW).
If it does require a band with an antenna that would create an interesting dynamic. I believe there’s already a significant majority of Watch owners who wear the band it came with all the time - at least among the people I see wearing Watches here in NZ, and they obviously would be quite happy - oblivious in fact.
There is also a significant minority who have dozens of bands. I expect there is also a fair number with a handful of bands. Apple has a good source of easy profit in these people - the Sport Loop especially sells for many times over what it must cost to produce. I know Apple would be willing to kill its accessory band sideline if it saw value in doing that, but I’m not sure car key is that value. It’s also a ‘slow burn’ feature as it will only be of value to owners of the vehicles it works with, which tend to be newer models that not everyone can afford never mind chooses.
I think a CPU bump is almost certain. The S4 was probably fast enough, but without seeing what faster still looks like or can handle I can’t be sure, and we may not yet be where the iPhone has been for some time where the processing is so fast nobody can tell the difference, and all it does is enable more impressive computational photography features.
I’m unconvinced the S4 and S5 don’t have the sensors needed for Blood Oxygen monitoring already, but the S6 could very likely improve sensors. It will likely have a bit more battery capacity, but only a little. All of that is the definition of incremental.
Power management to help it last long enough for sleep tracking, as someone posted earlier, seems very likely also.
I haven’t hear rumour of a killer feature yet however.
