London – It’s the question troubling most tech fans. The Apple Watch certainly looks great - but what it is for?
Having worn one for two weeks now, I think I know the answer. It has quickly become an appealing way to interact with the digital world, radically altering how you use your smartphone.
The Watch has many features, but its core function is quietly delivering the top line of emails, texts, Facebook updates and more to your wrist, to save you digging your phone out. Discretion is a real Apple Watch benefit.
Raise your wrist gently and the screen reliably blinks into life, showing the time or the latest notification. There are faces ranging from functional analogue to beautiful videos of blossoming flowers, to Mickey Mouse - all of them easily chosen or changed.
The Watch is designed to work for quick looks rather than the extensive connections you make with a phone. You wouldn’t use it to read an ebook or surf the internet. But for seeing whether your latest email is the message you’re waiting for, it is perfect.
You do need an iPhone – the Apple Watch is a companion device – but you can use the Watch to answer calls.
It feels intimate – an email is announced with a subtle tap on the wrist, imperceptible to those sitting right next to you. You can also set up a series of screens, showing information such as calendar appointments or battery life, or favourite apps such as Citymapper or British Airways.
With battery life, I feared the worst but the Watch rarely dropped below 20 per cent charge by the end of the day. However, it definitely needs nightly charging. Then there’s fitness. Thanks to the motion sensor and heart-rate monitor built into the Watch and the fact that it can poach the GPS from the user’s iPhone, it provides accurate measurements of how active you are.
Every hour, it will implore you to stand up if you’ve been sitting too long, every Monday it will gently encourage you to do better in the coming week. You can turn this off if you don’t like it, but the feature quickly becomes attractive, even addictive, with on-screen medals as rewards.
It’s great for sending messages, either responding to an incoming text with one of three automatically generated smart responses or dictating your words into your wrist. It translates speech to text well, though you can also send the message as a voice file. You can send special messages to other Watch owners – such as sketches you draw on-screen with your finger, or even your actual, right-now heartbeat.
There have been smart watches before, but the Apple Watch beats them hands down. It’s better built, has an appealing interface and offers a slick and convenient extension to your iPhone. Do you need it? Well, it’s a highly effective smart watch. If you want one of those and like the idea of staying subtly connected, it is a great way to go.
The Apple Watch is available to pre-order in Apple Stores from tomorrow and will be on sale from 24 April.
The Independent