Slashdot Mirror
Report: Apple Watch 2 Coming Late 2016 With GPS, Faster Processor and Better Waterproofing (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple analyst KGI's Ming-Chi Kuo says the Apple Watch 2 is right around the corner. The analyst says the Watch will arrive in late 2016 and will likely be announced alongside the iPhone 7 in September. It will reportedly feature a GPS, barometer, better waterproofing, as well as a new internal SoC for faster performance. Those looking for a fresh new design may be disappointed as KGI does not expect the physical design of the watch to change at all. The Apple Watch 2 will essentially be an 'iPhone S' update, where it keeps the same physical design with improved internal specifications. In addition to the updated Apple Watch 2, Apple is expected to update the original Apple Watch with a new SoC to improve CPU and GPU performance. The price of the Apple Watch in general should be cut even further than it already has. The original Apple Watch could receive more than a $50 reduction in its pricing, possibly pushing it below the $200 mark. We should know more in early September when Apple unveils the iPhone 7.
and some additional stuff that nobody cares about..
Almost all of those sensors are useless.
Temperature, sure. But is that going to change between the watch and the phone it's tethered to significantly enough for you to care? Likely not. Unless you want to measure something specifically and then you'll need a probe anyway.
3D scanner? You're going to run your wrist around a 3D object? Then what are you going to do with that data? Oh, yeah, ask the phone to do something with it.
Geiger counter? Come on. Cheap $20 sensors in every electronics store. Pointless even 20 years ago except in a "Cor, this is above average" kind of way.
Gas sensors? Much better suited to life-saving equipment designed to life-saving standards... or not at all.
Facetime camera has exactly the problem you suggest, and was my immediate first "Really?!" thought.
I struggle to think of anything vaguely useful for a smartwatch while it's still tethered to the phone that's doing all the work anyway, and if you could miniaturise the phone down to the smartwatch size reliably enough, that's a product in itself and has nothing to do with the applications of watches.
That said, I think I'd still find a watch more inconvenient than a phone. Sure, it's "on you", but it's difficult to have a private conversation without straining your arm, it has to be pulled back from under clothing to look at it for six months a year (my bugbear with watches entirely), and they are in the most inconvenient place to use for any length of time (the reason we put watches in breast-pockets for many years before wrist watches, and wrist watches are - as I've contended for several years - impractical as they are!).
Sod all the fancy stuff.
Shrink the phone down to your wrist first so that it's entirely self-contained and yet competitive with the most basic of smartphones.
Then you'll find how practical the rest is.
Hell, the BATTERY in my smartphone is larger than any watch I'd be comfortable wearing. We have a long way to go before smartwatches get anywhere close.
What we have is not a smartwatch. It's a bluetooth dongle on your wrist. An incredibly expensive, and impractical, one.
...*yaaawn*
Sorry Apple, but your watch is not the killer product you thought it was. Beyond the usual fanboys nobody is interested, not just in your smartwatch, but in any smartwatch. Phones do everything the watch can do much better except as a convenient way to tell the time, and if thats all you need the watch to do you can get a a Casio for the price of a takeaway that will do it equally well and have a 5 year battery life on top.