Last Tuesday, Apple took the wraps off five new products: iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, iPhone X, Apple TV 4K, and Apple Watch Series 3. Although each product was exciting in their own right, it was the Apple Watch that piqued my interest the most with its new data-enabled capabilities. However, as more information comes out about it, the less excited I get.
Ultimately, the new Apple Watch isn’t bringing anything to the table that we haven’t already seen before in other smartwatches. This isn’t the first cellular-enabled smartwatch, it looks just like Series 1 and 2 Apple Watches, and virtually nothing has improved battery life-wise, either. So, its main selling points are that it runs watchOS and has cellular connectivity, therefore making it an effective extension of your phone rather than something that needs to be constantly tethered to it.
And for $399, I wouldn’t consider it an awful deal. At least, it wouldn’t be if that’s all you had to pay for it to work as intended, but it isn’t.
As it turns out, there are two big stipulations that come with the purchase of an LTE-enabled Apple Watch: You need to be on a post-paid plan, and it’s going to cost $10 extra every month, with the first three months being free.
I recently switched to Virgin Mobile to take advantage of their Inner Circle promo, which bought me a year’s worth of service for $1 as long as I use an iPhone. Despite the fact that Virgin Mobile only sells iPhones now, their users won’t be able to use the LTE feature of a Series 3 Apple Watch. Kind of a bummer, but I’m practically getting a free year of service so no regrets. However, there are a lot of prepaid carriers and customers out there who are paying their bill every month, so it's disappointing that an entire demographic of mobile users are counted out simply because they're prepaid.
But even if I had the option to use the feature, I’m not sure I’d want to pay $10 extra for it. There's no SIM and the number is shared with the iPhone it's connected to - why can’t data be shared between the two? It's worse when you consider that the watch won’t even last that long should you decide to utilize LTE at all.
The new Apple Watch allegedly lasts up to 18 hours on a single charge. 18 hours would get most people through a day, but everybody knows that one should take the term “up to” with a grain of salt, especially since the Apple Watch only gets 1 hour of talk time when using LTE (3 hours when connected to an iPhone via Bluetooth). Other usage estimates include:
- 10 hours audio playback
- 10 hours indoor workout
- 5 hours outdoor workout with GPS
- 4 hours outdoor workout with GPS and LTE
So, clearly LTE usage has its drawbacks, and right now it appears that it’s a feature best used sparingly. No matter how you use it, you’re going to want to charge it every night if you plan to use it daily, and that’s still the biggest drawback for me. Although LTE connectivity is a cool addition to smartwatches, without solid battery life to last at least a few days on a single charge, I just don’t think it’s worth the purchase for me. If I could use it, I mean.
It’s still an exciting development, though, and sometimes I forget that it’s only been two years since Apple entered the smartwatch space. That’s a relatively short amount of time, and they’ve made some impressive strides. But between the battery life and the prospect of paying $10 extra each month, which seemed overpriced for its limitations, I think we’re still a few generations away from the Apple Watch – or any smart watch, for that matter – really hitting its highest potential.