In-depth experience with Apple Watch S8, and watchOS 9 gave me a bigger surprise

Original link: https://www.ifanr.com/app/1517771

In September, Apple held a unique press conference. It originally thought that the protagonist was definitely the iPhone 14 Pro, but it was stole the limelight by the new Apple Watch product line. Smart Island is very good, but Ultra is even more amazing.

As a result, Apple Watch Series 8 (hereinafter referred to as S8) has become the most easily forgotten new product at the entire conference. S8 can’t stand it. In previous years, it was the backbone of the Apple Watch family.

But as soon as the Apple Watch Ultra came out, the S8 could only play a supporting role…?

After two weeks of my experience (procrastination made me wear it for an extra two weeks), I wanted to give it a name.

The function is more insensitive, which is the correct direction of intelligent evolution

This year, the three Apple Watches are equipped with the S8 SiP chip. Due to the emergence of Ultra, the positioning of the S8 has become less high, but the functions that should be there are not lost.

A high-g accelerometer and a body temperature sensor have been added, each implementing new functionality.

The first is the former. Don’t be fooled by the name. In fact, the function it wants to achieve is straightforward: as the main sensor to detect whether a car accident occurs, it cooperates with the barometer and microphone to jointly complete the judgment of the car accident.

This feature is also available on the new Apple Watch SE. We also did tests to try to find the extreme range of triggering this feature. We ended up not having better algorithm than Apple, but at least we succeeded in triggering this feature. The attitude is the same: I sincerely hope that no one can use this feature.

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On the other hand, we failed to find Apple’s triggering rule, mainly because the number of tests was less. Compared with Apple’s 1 million hours of test data, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t compare with it.

As an off-topic, does the announcement of this real car data at this time point imply that Apple has made some progress in building cars?

Back to the watch, if you want to say that the S8 has a function that the SE does not have, then you must mention the optimized period tracking function.

At the earliest, menstrual data was only one of the many health data on Apple Watch; in watchOS 6, Apple launched an independent app for it to help female users record their menstrual cycles more conveniently.

Three years later, Apple Watch has added a body temperature sensor, which can track changes in body temperature during sleep, regardless of gender.

The difference is that after the ovulation day, female users will secrete progesterone, and the body temperature will also increase with the increase of hormones, and the increase rate is about 0.3-0.5 ℃. The ovulation date of the user can help the user to prepare for pregnancy.

Although this feature is not an “epic update”, it still shows Apple’s precise control of humanistic care at the hardware and software level.

The above new functions are not considered major upgrades in all seriousness. Before the huge technological change comes out, even Apple can only polish the details based on the existing functions, but Apple’s goal is clear, which is to make the watch smarter.

This intelligence is embodied in reducing the number of manual recordings as much as possible, making health and exercise monitoring as insensitive as possible.

If you’ve ever used an app that records how much water you drink in a day, you’ll know how tiring it is to manually record data. Apparently Apple also knows this, so we saw the more loving S8.

Of course, when it comes to intelligence, we have to talk about watchOS 9, which is the most powerful backing behind Apple Watch.

Without watchOS 9, the Apple Watch will be ordinary

As a 6-year-old Apple Watch user, I upgrade this gadget almost every year, but every year I feel that the Apple Watch is inferior in sports monitoring, which is reflected in the details.

It can monitor how far, how long, and how fast I run outdoors, but it’s all summative data to put it bluntly.

When I want to set a more detailed training plan, like training in a 120-130 heart rate zone for the first twenty minutes, then increase my heart rate, and run at a heart rate of 140-150 for another 20 minutes, it can’t do it.

During training, what I see when I lift my wrist is real-time data, which makes it difficult to execute more complex exercise programs such as interval runs.

After watchOS 9, Apple finally decided to improve the motion monitoring function.

In common sports modes such as running, cycling, swimming, etc., Apple Watch has added an interface to view the heart rate interval in real time, which can present an intuitive interval interval, and mark the current heart rate interval and the training time of each interval. It takes no time and effort to see it when you lift your wrist.

But Apple can do better, such as directly labeling the energy supply methods of the body in different intervals, such as “aerobic zone”, “anaerobic zone”, “fat burning zone”, etc., which is better than the naming of “section 1” and “section 2” way makes more sense.

Another, more significant innovation occurred in the sleep scene.

Yes, now Apple Watch finally has more detailed sleep monitoring data, including displaying different sleep stages, the duration of each stage and other information, including after entering Sleep Focus mode, the monitoring accuracy of the watch is also more accurate.

You know, in my previous use, it appeared that the sleep time was longer than the bed rest time, which made me doubt that I had mastered the magic skill of standing up and falling asleep.

In addition, it is still unable to accurately capture short-term supplementary sleep activities such as naps and naps.

It can only be said that the shortcomings of the Apple Watch are still there, but at least in terms of sleep monitoring, its capabilities have roughly equaled those of similar products.

After the Apple Watch’s sleep monitoring function has been fully upgraded, I wear it to sleep every night. Even if its power has been drained by me when I get home, I will put it on after a quick recharge.

Because under its “supervision”, I have a clear understanding of my dormant period.

Will he tell me how long I slept? How did you sleep? Combined with a self-judgment of my mental state the next day, even if it didn’t tell me to sleep more or go to bed earlier, because of its existence, I would consciously supervise myself, changing from heteronomy to self-discipline, It’s what taught me.

Of course, it can also be achieved with other wearable devices. I just want to say that people who gave up choosing Apple Watch because its sleep monitoring function is not perfect can finally get over this hurdle.

In short, after watchOS 9, Apple Watch has made great strides in various functions.

What is even more rare is that most of these advances are vertical, especially in the statistics of sports, sleep, and health indicators.

The deeper the lower limit of the Apple Watch is, the more room it can expand in the future.

However, this has pros and cons for novice users. I hope that Apple Watch can provide more detailed guidance in the future, so that novice users don’t have to shake their heads at a bunch of parameter indicators.

After experiencing the combination of Apple Watch S8 + watchOS 9, I can clearly feel that Apple wants to make the impact of the watch on users more insensitive and intelligent.

From the beginning, smart wear collected data unilaterally, and then evolved to centralized summary, and now, through the cooperation of sensors, algorithms, and manual input of users, it has been able to complete the prediction of some physical indicators.

Apple Watch has begun to slowly move towards a fully intelligent stage, but this evolution is still a bit slow.

Ah yes, after watchOS 9, users can control Apple Watch through iPhone mirroring, which is convenient for people with disabilities to operate the watch through a larger screen. This is another optimization of Apple’s accessibility features after “Assistive Touch”.

There are still several new watchOS 9 features that are not yet online, including racing routes, track detection, international roaming, and more.

So the current watchOS 9 is not complete.

I’m used to wearing the S7, and it’s hard to recognize the new look of the S8.

Perhaps Apple is patronizing to improve the inner beauty of this year’s S8, but the exterior design has not changed at all.

To put it another way, there is no learning cost for users of old models, but in fact, there are no surprises in the appearance of this generation of Apple Watch orthodox series, which is why Apple Watch Ultra will appear so dazzling at the autumn conference. .

Personally, I changed from the 45mm size S7 to the current 41mm S8, and I lost nearly 7 grams of weight on my wrist, and I got used to it after wearing it for a long time. The smaller screen does not seem to be a big problem for me.

The size is smaller, and the battery capacity is relatively smaller (282mAh), but the battery life is basically the same.

I turned on the 24/7 display on the S8, and fully charged it before going to bed. When I woke up, it still had 89% of the battery. After a day of normal use, it still had 40% of the battery before I got off work. Then it was not a problem to complete the real-time monitoring of sports for two hours. The amount has just turned red, take it off and charge it before taking a bath, and put it on before going to bed.

In this way, the habit of charging once a day has long been formed. From S2 to S8, the hardware is stronger and the functions are more, but the battery life is still the same.

I heard that the battery life of the Apple Watch UItra can reach 36 hours. If it is me, I may continue the habit of charging once a day. If not, I am afraid to break the original rule, and I will forget to charge it the night before. The embarrassing situation of no electricity available the next day.

Apple may have also considered this situation, and they have improved the “low power mode”. Even the S8 can last for 36 hours on a full charge. It is not difficult to “continue life” for half a day in the case of a lack of power.

In the new “low battery mode”, Apple Watch will retain the ability to receive push notifications, reduce the sampling frequency of heart rate monitoring, and turn off non-essential functions such as blood oxygen measurement. The rest of the basic functions are still retained, and it will not only display digital time as before. .

Again, the Apple Watch has finer details, in other words, it is more in line with user habits.

Wear it, my heart is surging

As a long-term user of Apple Watch, in addition to the “shadow of the watch” that has been exposed on my wrist, it has also changed my attitude towards sports. I unconsciously entered a kind of benign flywheel: sports without a watch is equivalent to I don’t exercise, and I wear a watch every day, so I just want to exercise.

This logic may sound a bit tricky, but it’s true.

Whenever I put it on my wrist, whenever I raise my wrist, whenever I see the sports three rings, my heart wants to go wild. Although I wear the S8, I usually only think about going wild in the suburbs and gyms.

For me, I no longer just focus on the number of steps, but balance my health from multiple dimensions.

At the micro level, I do different exercises every day to make my daily calorie consumption up to the standard and close the three loops; at a more macro level, I use the “trend” function to understand the changes in my health every year, which is stable and improving. Or gradually decline, you can have a comprehensive and clear understanding of your body just by looking at it.

When I see the arrow of an indicator go down, I know it’s time for me to make a change, or take two extra steps during the workday, or go to the gym on the weekend to work up a sweat, over time Positive impact on health.

So don’t think of it as a watch, think of it as the most enthusiastic friend in the sports punch-in group.

Finally, going back to the beginning, I said that I wanted to rectify the name of S8, but in fact, I did not need to rectify the name at all.

We can choose the Apple Watch, or any other smartwatch, but the only thing that makes the Apple Watch an Apple Watch is watchOS.

And the three brothers born in the Apple Watch family this fall have their own merits, and no matter how they choose, they have a common “good father”: watchOS 9.

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