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Apple Watch Series 9 'Basically Unchanged' Other Than Performance Boost From S9 Chip
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My Series 3 is still going strong! Guess I'll continue to hold out for the new design that isn't ever coming. 
I’ve tried a Venu 2 for a couple of months but went back to Apple Watch
Maybe on android Garmin for the win but not iOS for sure
Yeah I was tempted to get one but not open it then right at the end of the 30 days return activate the return which then gives you 30 days to return in case the s9 turns out poop which it looks that way! Sure it will drop again in price! Touchwood
Limited? The Apple Watch is BY FAR the most capable smartwatch when it comes to what it can do compared to a smartphone. What smartwatch are thinking of?
btw. of course people would still buy iPhones no matter what the Apple Watch could do, it has nothing to do with “features” and I’m sure no one thinks about product cannibalism.
“Can’t innovate my ***”
LOL … oh wait … it seems when it comes to the Apple Watch outside of the Ultra, which is way too expensive for somebody who doesn’t absolutely need the better battery life and/or advanced features, that they really can’t innovate in the Watch space lately.
I was on the 4 until this year when I finally upgraded to the 7 because the 8 didn’t seem like enough of an upgrade over a discounted 7 to warrant paying the full price for a new one. Here’s to hoping they are saving the real innovation for the X next year. If they produced either a sensor for a good blood pressure reading or an approximate but in the ballpark blood glucose reading I’d upgrade in a minute. Until they can do one or the other I just don’t see the point unless we’re taking about a serious battery life upgrade.
I’m not totally blaming Apple here. If it were so easy to add in those sensors somebody else would’ve done it by now so I know they are on the leading edge. At least I think they are anyway. We’ll see.
LOL … oh wait … it seems when it comes to the Apple Watch outside of the Ultra, which is way too expensive for somebody who doesn’t absolutely need the better battery life and/or advanced features, that they really can’t innovate in the Watch space lately.
I was on the 4 until this year when I finally upgraded to the 7 because the 8 didn’t seem like enough of an upgrade over a discounted 7 to warrant paying the full price for a new one. Here’s to hoping they are saving the real innovation for the X next year. If they produced either a sensor for a good blood pressure reading or an approximate but in the ballpark blood glucose reading I’d upgrade in a minute. Until they can do one or the other I just don’t see the point unless we’re taking about a serious battery life upgrade.
I’m not totally blaming Apple here. If it were so easy to add in those sensors somebody else would’ve done it by now so I know they are on the leading edge. At least I think they are anyway. We’ll see.
As far as performance goes, all it really needs is improved battery life at this point.
I mean how fast does a smartwatch need to be? Arguably it became fast enough a few years back.
Especially as the importance of it running apps is fading away now (in place of widgets).
I mean how fast does a smartwatch need to be? Arguably it became fast enough a few years back.
Especially as the importance of it running apps is fading away now (in place of widgets).
Just dumb limitations, no VPN, can’t connect to the cars Bluetooth hands free, but can connect to ear pods hands free, email that isn’t really stand alone, stuff like that
Also just because some other smart watch sucks more, that’s not a good excuse for the Apple Watch short comings
Still happy with my SE. I wish I had the ECG app, but that’s about it. Other than that, it’s perfect for my needs.
Still on my Series 5 - and while some of the features are nice to have it's still, so far as I can tell, the same watch just a bit faster.
I use the Ultra every day and it’s anything but a dog.
when do you always replace it?
My battery capacity health indicator is at 82%. Thinking about replacing the battery...
It might help if you provided concrete examples. After 6 pages of comments, I think you might be the only one talking about poor watch performance. What watch version, phone version and app is slower on the watch than the phone?
I've got a 12 Pro Max and an S6 watch and have no problems with performance.
Congrats. I've used an AW since 2015. Currently using Series 7. And they have always been very slow. Try any operation that can also be done on iPhone. iPhone is much faster. Try executing a simple Siri command from Apple Watch. You'll be waiting days for the response, which is 50/50 failure rate anyway. Do the same from iPhone and it will succeed instantly. And yes, that is absolutely processor related. There is nothing inherently wrong with the networking hardware.
When I’m outside with cellular without my phone, my S7 dies after 6h. It definitely needs a larger battery or a better LTE chip.
Your perspective implies it’s for people who buy an Apple Watch on a yearly basis and that’s who Apple caters for.
But there’s people who want to upgrade from older models who want the latest tech and don’t want dated tech or don’t want to blindly hold out for the next upgrade.
Why even release one then? I smashed up my 7 series a year ago in a stupid electric scooter accident. It held up well! It's scratched to all hell, but the screen stayed intact and it's fully functional! I was let down when last years was barely an upgrade. And now this.. Kinda sick of walking around with a partially smashed watch, but it'll be another year for me I suppose!
it's so speedy already that you'd have to be a robot with lightning reactions to benefit from the extra ten nanoseconds they'll shave off the performance
Better to walk around with a broken watch than be seen riding a electric scooter 😂
If true this is disappointing. I find an excuse to upgrade my iPhone every year and I allocate budget in September each year to also upgrade my watch but it looks as if this might be the second year in a row when I skip the watch upgrade.
I suppose the new SoC is good but for me that’s only because of any improvement in battery life that improved efficiency might bring. An increase in absolute performance (as opposed to performance per Watt) is not really of any interest to me because I have never once felt that my series 7 Watch was slow at launching or running apps; everything seems pretty instant to me.
And even for efficiency improvements leading to better battery life the big issue for me is that while I do want extra battery life, even a 40 or 50% increase in battery life won’t really make any difference to me because I already get all day battery life. The thing that would make a big difference to me would be for the Watch to become a multi-day-between-charges device, which my iPhone 14 Pro Max already is. That’s important to me so that I can do overnight trips without needing to pack a charger.
I think it’s going to take a few years of incremental improvements before Apple gets to a multi-day battery life on the watch so short of Apple pulling a rabbit out of its hat and managing to triple battery life in a single year I’m beginning to wonder what might cause me to upgrade in the next 4 or 5 years even though I can easily afford to. The only things I can thing of are…
- Some radical case redesign that I like. Personally I liked the rumoured squarer design from last year but I realise that many others didn’t.
- Apple adds an action button (like the one on the Ultra) to the regular 41mm and 44mm models. (I wear the 41mm size.)
- Apple manages to shave about 1mm or more off the thickness of the current design. Just a 1mm reduction would be quite compelling for me because my shirt cuff so nearly slides over my watch but not quite.
- Simply sheer necessity if my current watch battery degrades to the point where it can no longer last 18 hours on a charge every day in which case I would upgrade rather than get a battery replacement.
I suspect that last reason might be the most likely to force me to upgrade but some or all of those other things might get me to upgrade otherwise I can see myself still wearing the same series 7 in 3 years time.
I suppose the new SoC is good but for me that’s only because of any improvement in battery life that improved efficiency might bring. An increase in absolute performance (as opposed to performance per Watt) is not really of any interest to me because I have never once felt that my series 7 Watch was slow at launching or running apps; everything seems pretty instant to me.
And even for efficiency improvements leading to better battery life the big issue for me is that while I do want extra battery life, even a 40 or 50% increase in battery life won’t really make any difference to me because I already get all day battery life. The thing that would make a big difference to me would be for the Watch to become a multi-day-between-charges device, which my iPhone 14 Pro Max already is. That’s important to me so that I can do overnight trips without needing to pack a charger.
I think it’s going to take a few years of incremental improvements before Apple gets to a multi-day battery life on the watch so short of Apple pulling a rabbit out of its hat and managing to triple battery life in a single year I’m beginning to wonder what might cause me to upgrade in the next 4 or 5 years even though I can easily afford to. The only things I can thing of are…
- Some radical case redesign that I like. Personally I liked the rumoured squarer design from last year but I realise that many others didn’t.
- Apple adds an action button (like the one on the Ultra) to the regular 41mm and 44mm models. (I wear the 41mm size.)
- Apple manages to shave about 1mm or more off the thickness of the current design. Just a 1mm reduction would be quite compelling for me because my shirt cuff so nearly slides over my watch but not quite.
- Simply sheer necessity if my current watch battery degrades to the point where it can no longer last 18 hours on a charge every day in which case I would upgrade rather than get a battery replacement.
I suspect that last reason might be the most likely to force me to upgrade but some or all of those other things might get me to upgrade otherwise I can see myself still wearing the same series 7 in 3 years time.