Quanta rumored to build 3rd-gen Apple Watch, with extended battery and better speed
The next version of the Apple Watch due at the end of 2017 will bring little new to the table other than extended battery life and faster performance, if early supply chain reports out of China are to be believed.
According to the Chinese-langauge Economic Daily News, the next generation of the Apple Watch will be revealed in the third calendar quarter of 2017, and be built by Quanta Computer.
The new unit will reportedly not feature new sensors or a re-design, but will have extended battery life as compared to the current models, and a new version of the Apple S-series chip utilized in the Apple Watch, bringing better performance to the wearable.
Quanta has declined comment on "market speculation." Quanta is the current manufacturer of the Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watch.
Few significant rumors surrounded the Apple Watch refresh, prior to release. It was said that Apple hoped to squeeze LTE wireless data support into the Series 2, but was unable to do so with current technology limitations.
The original Apple Watch was announced by CEO Tim Cook in Sept. 2014, with the device hitting the market in April 2015. Nearly immediately, the device became the best-selling wearable, and still dominates the smart watch category.
The Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watches were revealed on Sept. 16, 2016. The Series 1 is essentially the same as its predecessor, but includes a faster dual-core S1P system on a chip.
The Series 2 Apple Watch is water resistant to 50 meters, has a brighter screen, includes the S2 chip, and GPS. As expected, it did not ship with LTE.
According to the Chinese-langauge Economic Daily News, the next generation of the Apple Watch will be revealed in the third calendar quarter of 2017, and be built by Quanta Computer.
The new unit will reportedly not feature new sensors or a re-design, but will have extended battery life as compared to the current models, and a new version of the Apple S-series chip utilized in the Apple Watch, bringing better performance to the wearable.
Quanta has declined comment on "market speculation." Quanta is the current manufacturer of the Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watch.
Few significant rumors surrounded the Apple Watch refresh, prior to release. It was said that Apple hoped to squeeze LTE wireless data support into the Series 2, but was unable to do so with current technology limitations.
The original Apple Watch was announced by CEO Tim Cook in Sept. 2014, with the device hitting the market in April 2015. Nearly immediately, the device became the best-selling wearable, and still dominates the smart watch category.
The Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watches were revealed on Sept. 16, 2016. The Series 1 is essentially the same as its predecessor, but includes a faster dual-core S1P system on a chip.
The Series 2 Apple Watch is water resistant to 50 meters, has a brighter screen, includes the S2 chip, and GPS. As expected, it did not ship with LTE.
Comments
http://www.macworld.com/article/1151235/macs/apple-rolls.html
I love my Apple Watch, but the statement above is not true. Using the word "wearable" includes the many lower cost bands from Fitbit, etc., and they sell in higher volumes than Apple Watch. Where Apple Watch likely IS on top: (a) total revenue, (b) total profit, (c) units in the smartwatch category.
How much and where the incremental changes to the technology are what needs to be discussed, not bellyaching because over your semantical outrage. For instance, how much power can be reduced with a new SIP or new display, which will lead to more power for the same size battery, a smaller battery with the same usability time, or some balance in between. Are there other power hogs in the Watch? Could a smaller but similarly effective haptic motor help bring down the size and weight? ...
What I wish is for my watch to be faster. Its pretty sluggish sometimes, even with the most basic tasks. I was hoping watchOS 3 would fix this and I guess it did a little but its still quite slow. I think the processor is clocked down way too far to save battery life.
I'd also like to see the speech to text improved. Its pretty frustrating to use sometimes because it screws up a word and usually right in the middle or end of the sentence so you have to cancel the entire thing and try again, and sometimes try again. The scribble actually works pretty well but I'm not always in a position to use that.
But I'm curious, what hardware and/or sensor do you think the Apple watch is missing? Other than a barometric altimeter, which some hiking watches have but which few people would need, what feature is the Apple watch missing that you are so desperately looking for?
The only thing I can think of is a direct cellar connection which would be stupid to implement given the current technology unless you are willing to charge your watch every 4 hours. I'm sure they are working on figuring that out, but how about we get a watch that last for more than 18 hours on a charge (Apple's official battery life spec) before we start adding a bunch of new power hungry hardware features.
The introduction of the Apple Watch itself was revolutionary -- and that was only 2 years ago. Since that time it has already seen significant improvement -- particularly by improvements to the OS. But, while adding GPS & water proofing were more of a marketing improvement than a functional improvement, nonetheless, they were significant improvements.
Compare the Apple Watch to the IPhone. Both have been following similar evolutionary changes since their introduction. Actually a better comparison might be to the IPod -- which grew into the IPhone and then continued to progress into its own, independent and indispensable product.
What I see for the Apple Watch:
1) Continued evolutionary hardware improvements leading towards increasing independence from the IPhone -- just as the IPhone became increasingly independent from ITunes running on Macs & PCs.
2) Increasing strength and proliferation of 3rd Party apps will drive the dominance of the Apple Watch over its competitors (such as FitBit & Garmin) -- just as it did for the IPhone.
3) Growth of the Apple Watch into health related fields -- both medical and fitness -- as sensors grow more powerful & sensitive and expand grow beyond simply measuring heart rate. However, for that growth to happen I think the Apple Watch may be limited by not being able to use its separate removable band. That was probably a technical mistake made by Apple leadership when they started the watch off as a fashion accessory.
I wear my Series 2 Apple Watch all day, every day and night. I usually charge when it gets around 50%--usually after about 24-36 hours depending on usage. This takes less than an hour. I could easily get 2 days of use before a battery warning if necessary.
One trick is to save battery while sleeping so I can use a sleep tracking app. I turn off Raise to Wake and set the brightness to minimum. This is a quick and painless way to keep the watch going for more than 24 hours and easy enough to set back to normal when I get up. But I would love it if Apple gave me a quick way to set this in Watch OS 4.
This has many real-world benefits, but to set-up manually this could be too complex for the average user, so I implore Apple to include several pre-made options that will automatically do this when enabled. When you choose that pre-made watch face it could also briefly show an overlay that says "sleep mode" or "theatre mode" so it's clear to the user what setup they've chosen.
* This watch face you have to create yourself—right now. It's essentially removing every complication you can from the modular watch face and then making the time's color red, as this is the least obtrusive option.
I think Apple has more important things to worry about with the Watch. Breakthroughs in the health arena will take time and some will be difficult if they require government approval. I'd rather than not have Apple launch a new Watch every year and instead maybe just introduce new bands and tweak the software to keep the device fresh.
Tight integration with iOS and macOS ecosystem is the innovative feature of watchOS 3 that no other smart watch can duplicate on any platform.
Typical troll bait from iHaters. "What was revolution about iPhone?" "What was revolutionary about Macs?" "What was revolutionary about iPod?!! My CD player couldn't play 100,000 albums!!!!!"
dont do that.
what really pisses me off is that android wear was rushed because everyone knew Apple was working on the Watch. Android dropped a steaming turd and now Apple's product is being compared to it as if it contributed anything.
Aren't they on a two-year cycle so far? The Series 2 was two years after the original was announced, wasn't it?