Apple’s Watch innovating in ways iPhone can’t

Smartphone innovation is dead. That’s not a complaint directed against Apple, which launched its new iPhone line on Wednesday; but it is the state of the industry. Another year of new smartphones has come and gone without any major leaps forward, except of course, in the price.

To be fair, Wednesday’s launch of Apple’s new iPhone series wasn’t supposed to bring any major new technological wonders, at least not in its smartphones. Apple always upgrades its smartphones a year after their initial release, and brands them with the ‘S’ — hence, the new iPhone XS.

But people need to stop looking to the iPhone for new innovations.

But the best new technology from the event wasn’t on the iPhone, it was the Watch. Apple’s Watch, which was derided as a flop only a few years ago, now gives us the ability to monitor our heart for danger signs such as arrhythmia or can make an emergency call for us when we’ve fallen down. That’s easily the most significant new technology to hit consumer electronics in a while. It also shows that Apple is looking at more ways to innovation than just the developing tech for that black, metal rectangle that has become almost blasé over the past decade.

New innovations that allow us to keep our smartphones in our pockets are only going to increase. New technologies, such as Google’s Digital Assisting or Apple’s Siri, are slowly being moved out of our phones and into their own devices. Smartphone innovation might be dead; but the devices that contact to them — or could even replace them — are just getting started.