W2 chip in Apple Watch Series 3 boosts wireless speeds while maintaining battery life
One of the things Apple briefly touched on in announcing the Apple Watch Series 3 last week was the W2, a new self-designed wireless chip that's nominally the successor to the W1 found in audio accessories like AirPods and the Powerbeats3. But what advantages does it offer, and why is it in a watch instead?
Apple has been coy about the subject, saying only that it boosts the Watch's Wi-Fi speeds "up to 85 percent" while making both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi "50 percent more power efficient." In fact an official specifications page mentions only an "Apple wireless chip," despite marketing elsewhere.
The chip's purpose isn't so much a dramatic performance boost as it is smoothing out the Watch experience. The Series 3 still only supports 2.4-gigahertz 802.11n Wi-Fi, for instance, so don't expect to max out a Google Fiber line anytime soon.
Above all, Apple's main concern seems to be offsetting the extra power consumption from LTE/UMTS cellular support in some models. Both the Series 2 and the Series 3 (cellular and non-cellular) are rated "up to" 18 hours of battery life, and while it remains to be seen how LTE will affect this, just coming close to that maximum would be an achievement.
Reducing battery drain also means keeping the battery the same size, or smaller, ensuring that the Series 3 is imperceptibly bigger. On stage, Apple COO Jeff Williams made a point of attacking some other LTE-equipped smartwatches, arguing that "if you don't do it right, it gets so big it looks like a house arrest bracelet."
The narrow goals of the W2 are obvious when you consider that the chip isn't in Apple's high-end Beats Studio 3 Wireless, announced a week prior to the Series 3, or in the iPhone 8 and X. A general-purpose component might be valuable to company, but that will probably have to wait until 2018 -- if not later.
Apple has been coy about the subject, saying only that it boosts the Watch's Wi-Fi speeds "up to 85 percent" while making both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi "50 percent more power efficient." In fact an official specifications page mentions only an "Apple wireless chip," despite marketing elsewhere.
The chip's purpose isn't so much a dramatic performance boost as it is smoothing out the Watch experience. The Series 3 still only supports 2.4-gigahertz 802.11n Wi-Fi, for instance, so don't expect to max out a Google Fiber line anytime soon.
Above all, Apple's main concern seems to be offsetting the extra power consumption from LTE/UMTS cellular support in some models. Both the Series 2 and the Series 3 (cellular and non-cellular) are rated "up to" 18 hours of battery life, and while it remains to be seen how LTE will affect this, just coming close to that maximum would be an achievement.
Reducing battery drain also means keeping the battery the same size, or smaller, ensuring that the Series 3 is imperceptibly bigger. On stage, Apple COO Jeff Williams made a point of attacking some other LTE-equipped smartwatches, arguing that "if you don't do it right, it gets so big it looks like a house arrest bracelet."
The narrow goals of the W2 are obvious when you consider that the chip isn't in Apple's high-end Beats Studio 3 Wireless, announced a week prior to the Series 3, or in the iPhone 8 and X. A general-purpose component might be valuable to company, but that will probably have to wait until 2018 -- if not later.
Comments
I pay $dollars for a given data allocation / month. Regardless of what I use to consume that data (iPhone, Apple Watch, tablet, etc.), I pay ... so what expense is the $10/month covering for AT&T, Verizon, etc.?
IF we all stopped using various features in protest, we could probably get them do drop fees for services that cost them nothing and get better deals for time, data, and family plans.
Hell, we're still paying for cellular calls we receive! That'll never change though it could. Convenience costs money. As long as we want it someone will charge for it. And most of us will pay it.
This is really the same question as asking why you have to pay extra for your iPad to be on your account, too, even though it doesn't have a phone number and shares data. Partly because people are willing to pay the fee for it, but I'm guessing the technical side is that even though it doesn't have it's own phone number, it has it's own ID on the cellular network. I don't know whether that ID is linked to your phone number on their system of simply via your iPhone, but there is some technical overhead for the cellular provider to provide the connectivity.
Not sure what the actual cost is to maintain the other device, but a lot of it is going to go towards the labor and tracking of a second device. $10 seems a little high, but it’s not the highway robbery so many people want to claim.
I think one of the reasons for the W2 chip would be seamless handover from wifi to LTE for Wifi calling (VoWIFI / UMA/GAN). Apple would want to ensure that their latency is low enough that these could be done successfully.
The AW3 prefers wifi over cellular to maximize battery life, so this is going to be a frequent thing, people switching as they stay on their call, but leave a wifi zone.
My own opinion on the monthly fee....I think $5 is fair to pay for that additional session on the carrier's network.
You know, if Apple did give us a native Phone app on the iPad, that would add an even greater incentive to have pairing with Apple Watch and iPad....for those of us that don't talk on the phone a lot that is.