Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Update to OS 3? Can't decide
- Thread starter AC-40
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It is much faster than 2.0. I had a the original watch and upgraded and makes a huge difference and battery was not affected.
Watch is faster with OS 3. A lot of people considered it somewhat slow with the first 2 OS versions
I second this. I have an original watch, and OS 3 sped it up quite a bit while having no noticeable effect on battery life.
It does take some time, so don't plan on it being a 10 minute thing right before bed. I think mine took about an hour from start to finish.
I'd update to 3 just for the structural changes with the dock, control center, quick change faces, etc.
I jumped into Watch ownership with v3 and only have limited experience with 1 and 2, but the older setup dedicating the button to the friend picker thing never made sense to me.
I jumped into Watch ownership with v3 and only have limited experience with 1 and 2, but the older setup dedicating the button to the friend picker thing never made sense to me.
It may be faster with Watch OS3, but if you search the forum, it's been reported faster battery drainage has been an issue for many Watch OS3 users. Likely that Watch OS3 keeps applications running in the background, which contributes to the speed when opening them at a faster rate.
Absolutely no battery issues with my Series 0 and Watch OS3. Battery life is as good as, if not better than, OS2.
Last edited:
My problem with OS3 is the now playing screen (or glance) is now several clicks away from the home screen.
OS2 you just swipe up to pause/change volume no matter what podcast/music app your'e using. This is the most common thing I've done on the Apple watch.
OS3 you now need to dock "now playing"; and a lot of the time you need to swipe through your most recently used dock items to finally get to Now playing.
Then on iOS10, the now playing controls are an extra swipe right from the control centre.
It seems to me that Apple is pushing music/podcast controls further away.
I note that on Android, the music controls are easily accessible by sliding down from the top still
OS2 you just swipe up to pause/change volume no matter what podcast/music app your'e using. This is the most common thing I've done on the Apple watch.
OS3 you now need to dock "now playing"; and a lot of the time you need to swipe through your most recently used dock items to finally get to Now playing.
Then on iOS10, the now playing controls are an extra swipe right from the control centre.
It seems to me that Apple is pushing music/podcast controls further away.
I note that on Android, the music controls are easily accessible by sliding down from the top still
There I things I don't like about OS3 (I much preferred the Weather app before and haven't found anything else that shows hour by hour temperature, conditions and chance of rain as clearly and I preferred the way the Activity app used to display data) but it's mainly a case of my fingers getting used to the differences. It's much faster though and I've seen no significant difference in terms of battery life.
