ConnectedArena One stop shop for everything on Wearables and Internet of Things!
Apple has announced its first smartwatch, the Apple Watch (and not iWatch), the company’s entry into the wearables arena (pun intended). The watch comes with a rectangular face, sapphire glass, swappable bands and a rotating digital crown. The watch will come in two different sizes and three different editions: Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition. Users will be able to choose from six strap options including a sport band, a leather loop, a classic leather buckle and a stainless steel strap that is easily adjustable.
It also comes with infrared and visible-light LEDs, along with photo sensors, to detect your pulse rate. All in all, it comes with a built-in gyroscope, accelerometer, a heart-rate sensor and a Taptic Engine for input sensing. The new Apple Watch will work only with an iPhone, similar to Android wear compatibility with Android phones.
The watch comes with a digital crown with IR and LED diodes. Pressing the crown takes you to the home screen where you can see all the apps. The display has a touch interface where you can select the app by tapping on it. Scrolling or zooming inside an app can be done using the digital crown. For example if you open the maps and want to zoom in, just rotate the crown and the maps will be zoomed in.
Just like other smartwatches currently available, the watch face is customizable and you can change the watch faces and also customize a particular watch face. As expected all iPhone notifications will appear on the watch homescreen of the watch, but developers will be able to create custom notifications for the Apple Watch.
The Watch also features two apps for health and fitness- Activity and Workout.
Apple Watch will use inductive charging. Although Apple didn’t mention the expected battery life, they hinted at an ‘all day usage’, which possibly indicates a day long battery life. It works with iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, and iPhone 5S. The Apple Watch pricing starts at $349 and will be available starting early 2015.
