Watching over wearers
Should you give Apple’s latest tech your time?
IT’S NOT often gadgets come along that can literally save your life.
A well-timed mobile phone call might qualify, alongside pacemakers and blood glucose monitors, but nothing has the same health credentials, convenience and style as Apple’s smartwatch.
The Apple Watch Series 4 will not only count your heartbeats but warn you if they get too fast or too slow. It will monitor your heart rhythms.
It will even alert the authorities if you have a fall, or nag you if you sit for too long or exercise too little.
Combined with podcasts, music, weather forecasts, messages, workout tracking and full no-phone-attached mobility, this new smartwatch looks to be the one wearable to rule them all.
Wrist redesigned
While its new medical skills will hog attention, the first significant Apple Watch redesign is worth your time too.
An extra 2mm on the size of this device doesn’t sound like a lot but, when combined with shrunken screen borders, it delivers a display more than 30 per cent larger.
This makes the watch easier to read, icons easier to tap and designs more impressive.
The watch’s body is also noticeably thinner than previous models, there are genuinely handy new watchfaces with more complications and animations to appreciate, and there’s now a gold stainless steel option – a cool, bronzed hue that doesn’t resemble a cheesy retirement gift.
This watch also delivers strong vibrations to your wrist, and more often.
You can customise this haptic feedback in the Watch app but, at full intensity, you’ll find it hard to miss an alert.
Talk to the hand
Naturally, Apple delivers a built-in 4G connection as an option in this watch so it can be used independently of an iPhone, whether you go for a run or leave your phone behind by accident.
Taking phone calls from your wrist has been made easier as the speakers have been swapped to the other side of the watch and deliver 40 per cent more volume.
Verdict
Apple may have been late to the smartwatch market, but its fourth watch will cement its position on top of it.