What features/capabilities would you like to see in the Apple Watch Series 6 or 7 that would make you undoubtedly upgrade from a 3/4/5?

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

My top 4 are:
1) Yellow gold aluminium option
2) Better battery life
3) More health sensors (that are meaningful)
4) Thinner

 

[loekf]

Use of properly scratch resistance glass on the aluminium (and ceramic ?) version. The "hardened" Ion glass is just crap.

My experience is if you hit a wall with a uneven surface or e.g. a table => scratch.

Unacceptable for a 300+ euro watch. It basically has the same scractch resistance as a <100 euro plastic Swatch. Just give me sapphire please.

 

[KeanosMagicHat]

Blood Oxygen level sensing & monitoring.

(and better battery life without making the watch even thicker – as others have said).

 

[44267547]

Use of properly scratch resistance glass on the aluminium (and ceramic ?) version. The "hardened" Ion glass is just crap.

I don’t disagree, But what other materials are there other than Sapphire? They already put a protective coating on it, which really is to protect against minor smudges/scratches.When you start investing R&D with a ‘scratch resistant‘ display, it just cost more to the push The costs to the consumer. The only other option is to use a sapphire display on the aluminum casing, but that would only increase the cost. So there really isn’t a viable solution other than realizing it’s just a smart watch that’s disposable, if you’re that concerned, then use a screen protector.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I want a Superman watch face.

 

[satchmo]

Thinner bezels please.

 

[mikedis]

Massively over-engineer the speakers, keep the water resistance, and enable music on WatchOS to allow for direct playback through the watch speaker itself. Yeah, maybe it’s a bit tacky, but could be useful for lots of situations when you can’t or don’t want to wear headphones. Plus, it’d be a funny way to flex on anyone with a S5 or older who can only play 30 second clips through Shazam.

The speakers on my S1 in my opinion are perfectly good enough to enable this through WatchOS, but we all know Apple would never do that... they’d want to brag about having the best speakers in a smartwatch or something before letting you blast music all about.

 

[UKapple73]

Blood glucose measurement
Third party watch faces

 

[nochese]

I'd like them to improve the accuracy of the calorie burning estimation. There's a difference right now between workout mode and passive monitoring because the heart rate monitor is always on during workout mode. Imagine if technology could be improved to the level where you can have full time fitness tracking, and the only reason you start a workout is to track the workout-specific activity. They would have to invent heart rate and motion sensors that could work all the time.

 

[Fayette3001]

Better battery life
Faster charging
Solid State Buttons
A proper interface for designing watch faces or at the very least editing the current ones a bit more.

 

[44267547]

Better battery life
Faster charging
Solid State Buttons
A proper interface for designing watch faces or at the very least editing the current ones a bit more.

Solid state buttons don’t provide any other actual functionality aside from a stronger water resistance (Think iPhone 7 haptic home button). Apple probably Will eliminate buttons eventually, to the point where it will be touched capacitive on the side, with the exception of the digital crown being the only real sole purpose of interacting with the UI.

 

[claude512]

I'd like them to improve the accuracy of the calorie burning estimation. There's a difference right now between workout mode and passive monitoring because the heart rate monitor is always on during workout mode. Imagine if technology could be improved to the level where you can have full time fitness tracking, and the only reason you start a workout is to track the workout-specific activity. They would have to invent heart rate and motion sensors that could work all the time.

Every Garmin, Suunto etc does this already

 

[Monkswhiskers]

Solid state buttons don’t provide any other actual functionality aside from a stronger water resistance (Think iPhone 7 haptic home button). Apple probably Will eliminate buttons eventually, to the point where it will be touched capacitive on the side, with the exception of the digital crown being the only real sole purpose of interacting with the UI.

I actually like the physical buttons, it makes it a viable sports watch for me, dual press to pause. I don't want purely touch screen stop/go as then I would be forced to go Garmin.

 

[nochese]

Every Garmin, Suunto etc does this already

Yes, I do wonder whether other devices like fitbit have the battery life to support this kind of monitoring. But what I don't know is how the competitor devices monitor activity. They are able to monitor heart rate 24/7? Or at least monitor heart rate often enough (maybe every minute) to get accurate activity?

The other question is how accurate different devices are. They're all trying to infer calorie burn from heart rate, motion, and user data like weight, height, and age. I wonder which company has the best model for this.

I actually should try an experiment where I go running/walking/biking, but only have the workout active for half of the session. I'd be curious what the difference is in calorie burn.

I actually like the physical buttons, it makes it a viable sports watch for me, dual press to pause. I don't want purely touch screen stop/go as then I would be forced to go Garmin.

This also reminds me, the running workout needs an option to add a lap by pressing one of the physical buttons. Double tapping the screen is unreliable and also requires the screen to be on.

 

[44267547]

I actually like the physical buttons, it makes it a viable sports watch for me, dual press to pause. I don't want purely touch screen stop/go as then I would be forced to go Garmin.

I’d agree. I like physical buttons as well. I have ‘touch capacitive‘ controls in one of my cars, and as unique and interesting as they for a ‘cleaner’ look, they don’t provide a tactile feedback to confirm the action taken. Similarly to the same functionality with the haptic home button on the 7/8, you have that nuanced feedback that corresponds to your actions. I think it would probably be more cumbersome to use a touch capacitive style button, but of course that’s likely what’s going to lead into the Apple Watch to create a stronger water resistant for less intrusion.