Over at its “Wonderlust” media event on Monday, Apple opened the show by announcing its new smartwatches, the first being the Apple Watch Series 8, which offers the first speed bump since 2020’s Series 6, on-device Siri processing, and more.
While the Apple Watch Series 9 units brought no visible hardware redesign to the main chassis, nor any new health sensors, Apple has stated that the aspects that will be noticeable are that the new Watch will perform significantly faster, and so should feel more responsive, than any previous model. This is due to the S9 processor, which marks the first significant speed boost, as opposed to the S7 and S8’s subtle boosts.
The S9 processor also incorporates a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip. The chip, which is the same one to be found in the iPhone 15, is intended to provide “distance and direction, as well as visual, haptic, and audio guidance to a misplaced iPhone.”
Other significant changes include a much brighter screen that can reach 2,000 nits for visibility in bright daylight — double that of the previous generation — and down to 1nit when dimmed. Siri voice commands are now being processed on the device for speed and include a focus on health.
Siri health queries will be coming “later this year in English and Mandarin with more languages to follow.”
Apple has also stated that the same on-device processing means that, with the Watch’s Neural Engine, dictation is up to 25 percent more accurate than the Apple Watch Series 8.
Other new changes include a new way to issue commands via Double Tap, wherein users can simply tap their finger and thumb together twice in order to answer calls, stop timers, and so on. Apple has stated that Double Tap will be available “next month.”
Despite the increased brightness, Apple claims that the Apple Watch Series 9 has an “all-day” battery charge of 18 hours.
The Apple Watch Series 9, which combined with certain combinations of the Watch and bands, also marks Apple’s first-ever carbon-neutral device. The new Apple Watch Series 9 uses 100 percent recycled aluminum and 100 percent recycled cobalt in its battery. The packaging for the unit has also been reduced in size, allowing Apple to ship up to 25 percent more Watches at a time, and together with low carbon shipping modes like ocean freight, Apple gets a 78 percent decrease in its carbon footprint.
As predicted, Apple has dropped its leather Watch bands, and that includes its traditional Hermes leather ones. Apple says that it will not again use leather in its product range.
In continuing with its relationships with Hermes as well as Nike, the companies are producing more environmentally friendly bands such as the Nike Sport Loop, a space-dye pattern that repurposes yarn from previous years. Apple itself is also producing environmentally better bands. The company has launched a form of band it calls FineWoven, which it says has a suede-like feel.
The Apple Watch Series 9 became available to pre-order on Tuesday and will ship to users from September 22, 2023. It starts from $399.The new Apple Watch Hermes and Nike bands can also be ordered today and will be in stores from September 22.
Aluminum models of the Apple Watch Series 9 come in starlight, midnight, silver, (PRODUCT)RED, and pink colors. The stainless steel edition comes in gold, silver, and graphite.
An Apple Watch Hermes edition is available in stainless steel in silver or space black.
Where the Apple Watch Utra 2 is concerned, Apple has added a new gesture, a brighter screen, and other features to the sturdier wearable. While the second-generation Apple Watch Ultra stayed similar to the first generation’s designs, there are some significant new changes.
Like its previous generation, the Apple Watch Ultra is a wearable designed for rugged environments and activities, with a large display and flat sapphire front crystal encased in a titanium enclosure. The always-on Retina LTPO OLED display returns with a new 3,000-nit brightness and can lower it to one nit for dark environments.
Changes to the brightness feature include a new Modular Ultra watch face, which utilizes the outer edge to offer more glanceable data.
Other new changes include the move to the S9 chip, which will provide a considerable performance boost to the new Apple Watch Ultra model, resulting in smoother UI animations, among other benefits. The S9, which has 5.6 billion transistors, now has a 4-core Neural Engine, enabling dictation to be 29 percent more accurate than the Apple Watch Series 9, and for on-device processing of Siri for common commands.
The second-gen Ultra Wideband chip, as expected, offers improved Precision Finding. Once a user is near the iPhone’s location, the Apple Watch will provide information such as the distance away from the iPhone using visual, haptic, and audio cues.
Like the Apple Watch Series 9, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has a new double-tap gesture that uses the S9 chip to detect a physical gesture from a user’s fingers. Tapping a thumb and forefinger together can answer and end phone calls, snooze alarms, set timers, scroll through certain watch faces, and more.
Siri has also been improved for the device and can handle tasks that don’t require online data, such as initiating a workout or setting up a timer.
Where production is concerned, Apple has stated that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is 100 percent carbon neutral, which implies that a company, person, or product has balanced the carbon dioxide it emits into the atmosphere with an equivalent amount of carbon offset.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 also runs watchOS 10, which offers new capabilities such as:
- Cycling workouts can automatically appear as a Live Activity on the iPhone and can expand to use the entire screen when tapped.
- The revamped Compass app shows the present elevation continuously and features a 3D representation of waypoints, illustrating the differences in elevation.
- Night Mode now leverages the ambient light sensor to turn on automatically in low-light conditions.
- Bluetooth integration for power meters, speed sensors, and cadence sensors is now available for cyclists, offering access to new metrics and views during workouts and cycling sessions.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 starts at $799 with preorders having opened on Tuesday, September 12. The unit begins shipping on Friday, September 22.