Apple Watch Series 10
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):
Apple Watch Series 10 is nearly 10 percent thinner than Apple Watch Series 7, Series 8, and Series 9, while offering all the advanced capabilities users love, adding new features, and maintaining all-day 18-hour battery life. An innovative metal back integrates the antenna into the housing of the device itself, combining the two layers into one. The back is perfectly matched in material, finish, and color to the rest of the case, making it appear like the device is made from a single piece of metal.
[…]
In addition to being thinner, Apple Watch Series 10 is also lighter: Aluminum cases weigh up to 10 percent less than Series 9, and titanium cases weigh almost 20 percent less than stainless steel Series 9. The case also features more rounded corners and a wider aspect ratio, which contribute to a much larger display while only slightly growing the case to new 42mm and 46mm sizes.
[…]
Fifteen minutes of charging provides up to eight hours of normal daily use, or eight minutes of charging powers up to eight hours of sleep tracking. Faster charging also means users can charge to 80 percent battery in about 30 minutes.
I’m not sure that I like that the base size is increasing. With Apple Watch SE being updated in 2020 and 2022, a new model seemed imminent, but it was not updated today.
Breathing Disturbances is an innovative new Apple Watch metric that uses the accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during sleep. Every 30 days, Apple Watch will analyze breathing disturbance data and notify users if it shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea so they can speak to their doctor about next steps, including potential diagnosis and treatment.
Because overall quality of sleep is important, Breathing Disturbances can also be used to assess restfulness of sleep. Breathing Disturbances can be influenced by alcohol, medications, sleep position, and more. Users can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month, or one-year period.
Apple Watch Ultra 2 in black titanium, Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 2, and the new Titanium Milanese Loop can be pre-ordered today, with availability beginning Friday, September 20.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-12): Mark Gurman:
This has gone under the radar, but if you have an Apple Watch Series 6 or newer with Blood Oxygen monitoring and you buy a new Apple Watch, you’re going to lose that very key feature a lot of people rely on until Apple figures out a workaround or settles with Masimo.
Imagine how much accurate [the sleep apnea detection] would be if it also used the oxygen data.
An interesting point of comparison. The Series 10 “Small” (42mm) Apple Watch is very nearly the same physical footprint of the “Large” (42mm) Series 1 Apple Watch.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-18): Joe Rossignol:
The first Apple Watch Series 10 reviews have been published by various media outlets and YouTube channels, ahead of the device launching on Friday.
Update (2024-09-25): Saagar Jha:
[After] using Apple Watch Series 10 for a bit I actually think this is a big limitation in one of the only new features introduced this year: the always-on display doesn’t actually update every second. Apple says it does, but it really doesn’t. Here’s why.
watchOS has new watch faces that do update every second. But none of the old ones do!
[…]
Anyway, for the new watch none of this has changed software-wise. But the hardware itself now invites you to look at it when your wrist is down. It is actually an interaction that is comfortable to do, because the display is so much brighter! But this old model doesn’t work.
The problem is stale data: the display is on, but the content doesn’t get a chance to update. Power is budgeted for the screen but not what is being shown on it. I don’t even know if there is a way to tell the OS this if you’re not one of the special cases that Apple has built in.
Update (2024-10-01): The Talk Show:
Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss Apple’s September product announcements[…]
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Interesting that they showed off a new Tides app that is seemingly exclusive to the new Watch model, despite the fact that there have been third party apps that do exactly the same for over 10 years and I'm confident Apple's version doesn't require latest generation hardware to display this information which isn't even computed on the watch.
@freediverx And why doesn’t the iOS Weather app show tides? It does sunrise, sunset, and moon phases. I was just looking for this functionality and ended up using a Web site.
"Fifteen minutes of charging provides up to eight hours of normal daily use, or eight minutes of charging powers up to eight hours of sleep tracking. Faster charging also means users can charge to 80 percent battery in about 30 minutes."
OK but it still means that you have to charge your watch. Which is still totally dumb compared to non smart watches which just work.
Which watch had that free diving thing where I can see how deep and for how long I went under?
That's like a dream come true feature for me.
Love the comment from "someone."
I don't have to charge my finger… why should I have to charge or power my mouse and Apple Pencil! Ha ha ha. An Apple Watch does just a *little* bit more than a "non smart watch."
@Erik
> An Apple Watch does just a *little* bit more than a "non smart watch."
True but it doesn't do what most non smart watches are able to do: display the time all the time and only require to change the battery once a year or less (which is free for some brands (e.g. Swatch)). It's not specific to the Apple Watch but to all "smart watches".
All these extra features are useless if you can't use them because you didn't charge your watch every 1 (or other) day (or usually during the night). Which makes this part a bit amusing in Apple's marketing text:
"Because overall quality of sleep is important, Breathing Disturbances can also be used to assess restfulness of sleep."
How can it work if you have to charge your watch during the night because the battery lifetime(1) still "sucks" in 2024 compared to dumb watches?
1. https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/
Side note: not sure it's a good idea to bring the mouse or the Apple Pencil as examples in a battery discussion considering the terrible UX of these Apple devices when it comes to charging.
Better and more useful loudspeaker does sound good though, to be sure. Not enough to upgrade from the Ultra 2, which was already a very incremental upgrade to begin with. I think I'll be waiting for a while, but it's unfortunate that the lines have diverged on some crucial functionality like that.
quoth someone:
How can it work if you have to charge your watch during the night because the battery lifetime(1) still "sucks" in 2024 compared to dumb watches?
I bought my Apple Watch specifically for the sleep-tracking features. I started with the first version that has reasonably-fast USB-C charging.
I charge it while I'm eating lunch or something. Getting 30 minutes of charging a day isn't a hardship unless I went to bed with 40% (fantastically uncommon) and I want to get to the gym immediately after waking up (fairly uncommon).
Side note: not sure it's a good idea to bring the mouse or the Apple Pencil as examples in a battery discussion considering the terrible UX of these Apple devices when it comes to charging.
The mouse is only awful if you never go to bed and you use your computer 24/7. A Lightning-based Pencil in a USB-C world sounds awful, but if all you need to do is stick your Pencil on the edge of your iPad for five seconds to charge it from dead and use that as a resting place for your Pencil, you should be fine.
@Nathan
> I charge it while I'm eating lunch or something. […]
OK, thanks for the use case. But this means you still have to plan to charge it. Personally, I will be convinced by this product when you don't have to think about charging it.
> The mouse is only awful if you never go to bed and you use your computer 24/7
It's awful in all cases. The dead turtle design for charging is wrong. Not the battery life.
> stick your Pencil on the edge of your iPad for five seconds
Maybe with the most recent models but for the original one, the ideas was to plug it to the iPad.
