Category: Smart Watch

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Smart Watch

Apple Watch Series 9, SE And Ultra 2 Launched: Price, Specs

Apple has finally launched the next generation of Apple Watches at its Wonderlust event. The company unveiled the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Apple has launched the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, focusing on better performance with new chipsets and improved sensors.

Apple Watch Series 9: Specifications And Price

The Apple Watch Series 9 has received some serious upgrades in the performance department thanks to the new S9 chipset. It uses a 5nm architecture and is a substantial improvement over the previous S8 chip. Apple claims it is the most powerful chipset with 5.8 billion transistors, which is 60 per cent more than Series 8 and 30 per cent faster.

It also has a four-core Neural Engine that can process tasks like Siri requests on the device without requiring cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity. This is the biggest performance upgrade since the S6 processor used in the Series 6. Furthermore, it is also more power efficient, offering an 18-hour battery life.

In addition, the Apple Watch Series 9 also gets the new U2 Ultra WideBand (UWB) chip, which enables Precision Finding for iPhones.You can navigate to your iPhone with directions and a vibration to help you locate the device. This offers improved location accuracy and more reliable FindMy capabilities. Both the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Ultra 2 have been launched with these new chips.

The Series 9 has an Always-On Retina Display with slim bezels that can go as bright as 2,000 nits and as low as one nits. This is more than twice the brightness of the Series 8. You can activate a new Double Tap gesture by tapping your index finger and thumb together twice.

You can use this gesture to answer a call, stop a timer, snooze alarms or scroll through widgets. This is useful if your other hand is occupied and you want to perform actions on your watch. The feature will be available on Series 9 starting next month.

WatchOS 10 has a new Name Drop feature, which can help share your personal information with another user when in the vicinity of their device. The new operating system also allows interaction with HomePod devices and improved Find My functionality.

The Series 9 will be available in Aluminium options of Pink, Starlight, Silver, Midnight and Product Red and stainless steel options like Silver, Gold and Graphite. It is available in India for a starting price of Rs.41,900 and will go on sale in two sizes: 41mm and 45mm, respectively.

Apple Watch Ultra 2: Specifications And Price

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is lighter and faster than before. Similar to the Series 9, it uses the new S9 chip apart from the U2 Ultra Wide Band Chip. It features a 49mm titanium case with MIL-STD 810H certification, IP6X dust resistance, and 100 meters of water resistance.

The Ultra 2 has the brightest display on the smartwatch, with a peak brightness of 3000 nits. It offers up to 36 hours of battery life on a single charge and 72 hours on the low power mode. The Night Mode will be automatically enabled in a dim environment, and the new watch face will show you information like Altitude, Depth and Seconds.

Like its predecessor, it retains the customizable action button for quickly starting workouts or using the compass. The Ultra 2 features the S9 chip with 5.6 billion transistors and a 60 per cent performance improvement over the previous generation. Thanks to the dual-frequency GPS, it can now track your workout sessions and location more accurately.

It also gets all WatchOS 10 features, like the Double Tap gesture, which will be available in October. Apple has also focused on sustainability by promising to make all products carbon-neutral by 2030. The watch’s Alpine Loop and Trail Loop bands are made from recycled materials. The Apple Watch Ultra starts at Rs.89,900 in India and will be available in a single size of 49mm from September 22.

Apple Watch SE: Specifications And Price

Apple announced a refresh of the Apple Watch SE made from 100 per cent recycled aluminium. The new watch has a Sports Loop strap that offers 75 per cent carbon footprint reduction.

It runs on the older S8 chip and has a Retina display with 1,000 nits of brightness. The watch also offers GPS connectivity and up to 18 hours of battery life. It runs on watchOS 10 and provides safety features like Crash Detection and Emergency SOS.

The watch is water resistant up to 50 meters and has GPS and cellular connectivity options. It lasts 18 hours on a single charge and comes with a Low Power Mode. It will be available for a starting price of Rs.29,900 from September 22.

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Smart Watch

How Smart Watches Work

There’s no doubt that with the popularity of smartphones that can manage virtually every aspect of our lives, the trend in technology is to get more and more “connectivity” into smaller and smaller packages.

Simultaneously, wrist watches have become a lesson in technological redundancy for many people. Ask a friend for the time of day and they’re just as likely to glance at their smartphone as they are to look at an actual wrist-bound timepiece. The newest wave of smart watches aims to change all that

Smart watches are digital watches that do more – a lot more – that your old analog time tracking device. We’re not talking about that once-amazing calculator watch that you had in elementary school. These are full-fledged digital tools.

Watches on the Rise
Smart watches haven’t exploded in popularity for various reasons. The technological hurdles are high. And the fashion faux pas are, well, unforgivable.

Let’s start with the tech side. Because human wrists are only so big, wrist watches must be extremely compact. In turn, this means the display must be small. That means a populace accustomed to ridiculously oversized smartphone screens must learn to use a substantially smaller interface on a smart watch.

t also means that software developers must find intuitive graphical interfaces that fit a watch’s limited display area. As programmers who create smartphone apps can attest, this challenge can make or break a product.

Battery life is another notable design challenge. Current battery technology will only power a glowing smart watch with myriad functions for a few hours. After that, it’s back to the charger.

And then, of course, there’s the fashion aspect of smart watches. Like it or not, a watch is a fashion item, and it reflects directly on your ability to dress yourself properly in the morning. Most manufacturers are still struggling to combine features and fashion in ways that don’t shriek “geek.” The designs tend to be clunky, obnoxiously large and likely to clash with any wardrobe that rises above casual.

Product to Watch
So far, no smart watch has captured the imagination and devotion of consumers. With so many companies dumping so much time and money into these products, it seems likely that at some point, a smart watch will strike industry gold.

It may be that the rumored products from Apple and Google could be the ones to succeed. Apple is known for its ability to combine usefulness with aesthetics, and Google’s deep pockets and sprawling Android user base could help put a smart watch over the top.

Until the first home-run product arrives, it’s anyone’s guess as to where watches will go from here. Perhaps they’ll always be considered smartphone accessories, permanently tethered to a more powerful handheld device. Or maybe an innovative user interface and better battery life will result in watches that cast off master gadgets as unnecessary, and perhaps … unfashionable.

It might be that the limited real estate of a watch is simply too difficult of a hurdle for contemporary technologies to overcome. At the moment, each manufacturer is basically going fishing – throwing out their lines of products in the hopes that at least one of them will snag a following. So far, Pebble (perhaps the biggest underdog in the entire lineup) has done best, selling more than 250,000 units in its initial offering.

If such a small company can find a niche with its digital contraptions, you can bet that bigger corporations are working to do the same.

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Smart Watch

Apple watchOS 9.2 Update Released, Brings Improved Battery Life On Apple Watch Ultra

Apple has released a bunch of updates today to all its devices, including smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, media streaming devices, and computers. Alongside iOS 16.2 for iPhones and iPadOS 16.2 for iPads, the company also released the watchOS 9.2 update for Apple Watches. The new update brings improved battery life for some Apple Watches in certain conditions, improvements to automatic workout detection, and the ability for family members to control HomePod and other smart home devices, and more.

Let us check out all watchOS 9.2 features that are coming to Apple Watches.

Apple watchOS 9.2 Update: New Features
With the watchOS 9.2 update, Apple Watches can automatically start Outdoor Run workout when you arrive on a known running track and offer additional track-specific metrics. You can compete against your previous workout records in Outdoor Cycle, Outdoor Run, and Outdoor Wheelchair using the Race Route feature. The update also brings the improved Kickboxing workout algorithm for more accurate tracking metrics.

Apple Watches running watchOS 9.2 can display environmental noise levels using the Noise app while wearing AirPods Pro (1st Gen) and AirPods Max when ANC is turned on. The Family Setup feature lets members in the family to control HomePods and other smart home devices using the Home app. They can also unlock compatible smart door locks using the Wallet app.

The new software also brings improved accessibility features, including the support for visualise when Siren is in use on the Apple Watch Ultra and improved response time and accuracy of hand gesture controls for Assistive Touch and Quick Actions.

The Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen), Apple Watch Series 8, and the Apple Watch Ultra also gets improved crash detection performance. There were a few bugs that caused interruptions in the Mindfulness app during sessions and caused incorrect time to be displayed just after dismissing an alarm. Those bugs have been fixed with the watchOS 9.2 update. The update also improves battery life during multiworkouts on the Apple Watch Ultra in power saving mode.