In 2015, undoubtedly among fans of the Apple brand, but not only, there was an increase in the commotion caused by the release of the company’s first smartwatch. I owned one of them myself! Innovative, waterproof, measuring your heart rate, equipped with a flashlight, wi-fi, wireless charging, personalized clock face, and above all connected to your iPhone so that you can receive notifications from your phone through your watch, as well as the weather, steps taken, activity, music controls and many other watch-specific applications available with interchangeable bands in various colours.
Along with the production of the next series, producers enriched Apple Watches with new functions. Among other things, GPS, Bluetooth, SOS alarm, microphone, speaker, payment functions and compass. And also cooperation with Nike in new types of sports, silicone, leather, braided or steel bands. The number of new functions, however, did not change radically from model to model, one of them caused a scandal – the electrocardiography function and arrhythmia notification, which was only available to users in the United States due to the lack of appropriate medical licenses. This clearly disappointed customers, because due to the lack of this function, the previous series did not differ much from the newest one. With time, however, the company managed to reach other countries one by one.
The next, eighth edition of the smartwatch, although it does not even have a release date yet, has already aroused the emotions of future buyers. So far, in the previous series, there have been no changes in the appearance of the watch, but according to speculations and reports of people working on it, it is to be larger and have flat edges for the first time, and also be available in a third variant – for use in extreme conditions. There were also suspicions that “Apple Watch Series 8 will work under the control of a new operating system. This year’s models have watchOS 8 installed, which was presented by the manufacturer during the WWDC 2021 conference in June. So we can expect more detailed information about the system of new watches in May or June 2022. “
However, these rumours may turn out to be untrue, as well as about the new features of watches – measuring body temperature, hydration level, blood pressure, glucose monitoring and blood oxygenation for sleep apnea, which disappointed customers again.
“Don’t expect any of these soon, though. Body temperature was on this year’s roadmap, but chatter about it has slowed down recently. Blood pressure is at least two to three years away, while I wouldn’t be surprised if glucose monitoring doesn’t land until later in the second half of the decade.”
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman
Although Apple Watch is currently the most popular smartwatch on the market, but the frequent release of new products without major changes from the previous model and publicizing their premiere on unreal rumours will not satisfy its customers.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/10/22876324/apple-watch-series-8-body-temperature-smartwatch
https://www.apple.com/pl/watchos/watchos-8/
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP745?viewlocale=pl_PL&locale=pl_PL
Yeah there are for sure high expectations for the 8th iteration. We know for sure 2 things really: the software will be called “WatchOS 9” and the watch itself “Apple Watch Series 8”. The rest is a mystery. But we can speculate. Given the huge amount of rumors from September 2021, a major redesign is highly possible – Apple Watch will be in a shape of a new flat-edged enclosure similar to iPhone 12’s redesign. About new features it’s really hard to guess. They can add really whatever they want and virtually no one will care, because these technologies are slowly beginning to become very niche. Not many people would need glucose monitor – I mean only people with diabetes will use it. Thus this feature is not that important in the grand scale of things.
Currently I’m using Apple Watch SE and I’m looking forward to buy next gen IF the design will be changed. Personally I don’t care about most of those healthy functions added in last generations, but yeah, it’s just for the sake of convenience for me.
Apple watch development became a bit weird with latest generations. They introduce interesting and cool features like blood oxygen level, but almost nobody really uses it, while community ask for built in thermometer and other more useful sensors.