In September Apple showed us its wearable, the Apple Watch, but now we’ve actually gotten a chance to use it firsthand.
At today’s press event in San Francisco, I was able to poke, prod, and swipe an Apple Watch in a staging area the company set up next to the hall where the presentation took place. Overall, I found the touch and software experience of Apple’s Watch certainly as good as, if not better than, any other smartwatch on the market today. The hardware quality is superb, the screen is sharp, and the software experience is surprisingly robust—perhaps overwhelmingly so.
I tried on an Apple Watch with a brown leather band with a modern buckle. The watch was simple to take on and off. With this band, you simply press both sides of the buckle at the same time to release it once it’s on your wrist. The watch face itself sits comfortably on your wrist—the back is very smooth, and the rounded edges prevent any unwanted pinching. I tried the 38mm version, as I have a lady-sized wrist, and unlike other smartwatches, I didn’t feel like I had a small TV screen strapped to my arm.
The touch experience on the screen is exceedingly swift and responsive. You can tap or scroll on the screen using a fingertip, or use the digital crown on the side to scroll or zoom. Being accustomed to using an iPhone, using the crown for navigation feels kind of awkward and foreign for now, but I could see myself getting used to it in the future. For zooming into apps on the home screen, I had trouble spinning the crown to the exact zoom level I wanted (again, something that probably comes with practice). However, even without optimal zoom levels, I was usually able to tap the exact app I wanted to open. Apple’s circular icon-filled home screen is markedly different from other smart watches. I’m interested to see whether it is in fact easier and more convenient to use than swiping through a couple of pages to reach your app of choice, like on Android Wear.
Apple’s primary fitness app, which logs your exercise, standing time, and general movement, is very easy to use. You get an overview of all three metrics in graph compose of concentric circles, and by swiping from the right, you can get more details on each of those areas. With a swipe downwards, another graph shows exactly when in the day you were active.
When you use the exercise tracking app, you can select one of a number of different activities from a menu. Then you can set different goals for that activity, like distance or calories burned, for a run or walk. Once you hit start, you get a 3-2-1 countdown before the app starts tracking your activity. I’m used to waiting for a Garmin to sync with its satellites before pressing record for an activity, but not used to waiting once you actually hit start, so this was slightly off-putting. However, it does ensure that if you need to stash one last thing in your pocket before you start your workout, you’ve got a few seconds to do so.
Dialing It In
While you can control a number of the Watch’s settings from its companion iOS app, the Apple Watch also has a settings app on the watch itself. There, you can adjust the brightness of the screen, the size (and boldness) of the text, whether you want “Hey Siri” activated, or whether you want the screen to automatically wake when you lift up your wrist. The settings are minimal, and usually take two to three taps to complete. For controlling more detailed things like what app notifications you get on the watch, you’ll use its companion app.
For the most part, as we expected, app experiences are stripped down to the bare minimum, in terms of looks and functionality. One thing I didn’t like: the calendar app. I certainly think third party developers will be able to make something better. Apple didn’t have very many third party apps available for the demo at this point, but we will surely see a flood of new options once the watch app store actually goes up. But, calendar notifications and alerts are something better suited to viewing in a Glance, which you access with a downward swipe from the home screen. (And it was convenient and easy to tap the digital crown to return back to the home screen after you’ve completed an activity on the watch’s face.)
I’m cautiously optimistic to give the Watch a longer go, whenever review units become available. It does seem, for now, that it accomplishes a number of traditional smarwatch tasks in a more simple, and certainly more beautiful way. But needing to charge every day, with its 18-hour battery life, is still a bummer, and I wonder about how slowly third party apps will update over Bluetooth and Wi-fi. These are things we’ll look out for once we’re able to do a full review.
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