APPLE WATCH 3: NEWS, NEW FEATURES, AND RELEASE

Here’s everything you need to know about the Apple Watch Series 3.

A familiar design, but now with LTE

From the outside looking in, the Apple Watch Series 3 shares a lot in common with its wearable predecessors. It retains the curved-corner rectangular design of the Apple Watch Series 2 and original Apple Watch, roughly same weight and dimensions (with the exception of a crystal at the bottom that’s .25mm bigger), and the same fitness-tracking hear rate monitor, accelerometer, and gyroscope sensors. And like the Series 2, the Apple Watch Series 3 has a built-in GPS that can log your workouts when your iPhone’s out of range.

It’s also water- and dust-resistant. Like the Series 2, the Apple Watch Series 3 is hermetically sealed and waterproof up to 50 meters of water — a boon for swim-tracking. Thanks to a combination of machine learning algorithms and biometric sensors, the Apple Watch Series 3 can measure calorie burn, swim laps, and distance in real time.

But the Apple Watch Series 3 has something the Series 2 and first-gen Apple Watch don’t: LTE. Cellular-enabled versions of the Apple Watch, which are designated by a red-accented crown button and cost a bit more than Wi-Fi-only models, can make and receive calls, send messages, and stream music without being tethered to an iPhone. That’s all thanks to an embedded SIM card and LTE modems built by Intel.It’s a set-it-and-forget-it affair. When you power on the Apple Watch Series 3 for the first time, it detects your iPhone’s phone number and tries to figure out if you’re already setup to use an Apple Watch. If not, it prompts you to add the watch to your existing data plan and switches to your carrier’s network automatically. When LTE’s in use, a little signal strength indicator appears in the top-left screen.

LTE enables features like WeChat, Maps, and Apple Music. (When you use an feature Find My Friends, the Apple Watch Series 3 is smart enough to switch your location over to the Watch automatically.) And it provides on-demand access to Apple Music’s catalog of 40 million song, and streaming radio stations like Beats One Live.

The Apple Watch Series 3’s other improvements are a little less noticeable, but no less appreciable. The screen is a little brighter and more durable, thanks to micro-LED and glass-film touch technology (as opposed to OLED and touch-on-lens panel onboard the Apple Watch Series 2. The processor, a slightly upgraded dual-core processor called the S3, is 70 percent more powerful than the Series 2’s S2. A custom W2 chip is 85 percent faster on Wi-Fi and 50 percent more power-efficient, and a barometric altimeter measures verticality as you climb steps or ski down a mountainside.

There’s double the internal storage in the Apple Watch Series 3 (16GB as opposed to 8GB in the Series 2), and battery life is improved. Apple says it lasts 18 hours across a mix of activities.

Here’s how long you can expect Apple Watch Series 3’s battery in a range of scenarios, courtesy Apple’s battery information page: 

• The Apple Watch Series 3 LTE model should get three hours of talk time when paired to an iPhone and just over an hour when connected to LTE.
• The Apple Watch Series 3 lasts an estimated ten hours during indoor workouts and four hours during indoor workouts, or a maximum of four hours with both LTE and GPS are enabled. 
• The Apple Watch Series 3 can stream music for 10 hours when paired to an iPhone via Bluetooth.

WatchOS 4

The Apple Watch Series 3 runs WatchOS 4, the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating, and it puts a big emphasis on fitness tracking.

An enhanced heart rate app shows your heart beat with the raise of a wrist. It records new measures like resting heart rate and recovery heart rate, and pings when you have over 120bpm and aren’t active.

A new Quickstart interface provides one-tap access to workouts like High Intensity Interval training and swim workouts, and a refreshed Activity app with notifications that tracks your progress toward fitness goals.

Core Bluetooth, a new connectivity setting, lets the Apple Watch to pair directly to health and fitness-based Bluetooth devices like glucose monitors, treadmills, and more for direct data sharing. Starting a workout on a compatible machine automatically triggers the Workout app on the Apple Watch Series 3, and transmits metrics like speed, laps, and total calories burned.

There’s more to WatchOS 4 than fitness tracking, of course. A new Messages app lets you send and receive payments via Apple Pay, and an updated Mail app lets you compose messages with Siri’s text-to-speech or canned quick responses. And new watch faces like Kaleidescope and Toy Story shift, change, and animate throughout the day.

Another new watch face, a Siri-powered notifications dashboard, uses machine learning algorithms and contextual information to serve up useful notifications. In the morning, you might see traffic updates and upcoming calendar appointments, and in the evening, you might get sunset times and HomeKit scenes.

New and updated complications include a Heart Rate complication that shows real-time heart rate measurements, and  a new Apple News complication provides one-tap access to breaking news.

Release date and availability

The Apple Watch Series 3 — both with and without LTE — will be available for pre-order starting on September 13 at midnight in 38mm and 42mm sizes. You’ll be able to reserve one via the Apple Store website or the Apple Store app for iOS devices, and carriers including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, and others in 26 countries will sell the Apple Watch Series 3 on September 15, and ship it beginning September 22. The Apple Watch Series 3 starts at $330 without LTE, and $400 with LTE.

There’s a model for everyone. The Apple Watch Series 3 is available in gold, silver, space gray aluminum, and space black stainless steel cases, plus a gray ceramic Apple Watch Edition. There’s a new Sport Loop with a wrap-around nylon band. And the an updated Apple Watch Hermès, which comes in new designs with a single silver buckle and double buckle, retails later this month.