Will you buy an Apple Watch?

Don Landis said:

Go to that toystory with woody and then you press on custom. now scroll up. there is Buz Lightyear alone and toy box with all the characters.

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Thanks...didn't know that.

Neither did I. I had to get the sales guy at the store to show me.

Mine is on order from B&H. I originally ordered from Apple but the delivery was going to be the end of October. I ordered SS with white sport band. They say they will start shipping on Monday.

I think my original watch is using more battery than the wOS3. I just hit 12 hours and only have 56% left.

I'm setting up this cellular watch as a second watch, with restore from the first one so everything is the same. I think I'm on the final steps. Had to re-enter all the CC in my wallet and log into Verizon to add the watch to my phone number.

Don Landis said:

I think my original watch is using more battery than the wOS3. I just hit 12 hours and only have 56% left.

I'm setting up this cellular watch as a second watch, with restore from the first one so everything is the same. I think I'm on the final steps. Had to re-enter all the CC in my wallet and log into Verizon to add the watch to my phone number.

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Mine hasn't arrived yet today. Was it possible to not enable the cellular?

Ok just rang me up and said it is finished. This is pretty cool, it fired up with Buz Lightyear as I just reset the first watch to that face a few moments ago. It also is tracking my activity circles for the day too. Now I should be able to switch watches and they should update to what the other one is. Pretty cool Apple allows more than one watch to sync and they can be either set up separate or sync to each other.

There was a screen that asked "set up later" on both the wallet and the cellular.

I'm not paying $10/month for LTE. Not worth it. Maybe if it were $5/month. I might try the 3 months free with T-mobile.

I decided to test it for awhile and see how I use it. So far it worked great. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about over the wifi vs cellular LTE issues but my wifi at home didn't interfere on the call I tested. The phone app has a nice access to the full contacts, Favorites, VM, keypad, and recents. You can shut off the cellular in the watch to save battery. I'm going to leave it on for now just to get a feel for the battery drain.

While my stock trading app is stated to support iOS11 it apparently does not support wOS4. Disappointed. I will send TD Ameritrade a notice on that. I had my wOS3 set up to execute and disable trades from the watch with stock price notifications. None of that works anymore. The Apple watch stock app works for a listing with nice graphs for the day.

Later today, I will test the Qardio BP app and see if I can measure my Blood Pressure and EKG from the watch3.

mackie- Are you on T-Mobile with anything now? I need to find the lowest cost for about 2GB of data for my new Sony phone. I don't want to pay anymore than $10 a month. Or I will just set up the tether from the iphone.

Don Landis said:

mackie- Are you on T-Mobile with anything now? I need to find the lowest cost for about 2GB of data for my new Sony phone. I don't want to pay anymore than $10 a month. Or I will just set up the tether from the iphone.

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I have 4 lines of unlimited and pay $100 plus taxes. It's a grandfather plan. T-mobile is charging $10/month for the watch with unlimited data.

That's fantastic! I pay 165 for 4GB and two phones. In 3 months I will be adding $10 for the watch. However, things may change. Legere is in talks again to sell out to Sprint. Keep your eyes open on that. That's the bad news, but the good news is the rumor he wants to run the merged companies.

Don Landis said:

That's fantastic! I pay 165 for 4GB and two phones. In 3 months I will be adding $10 for the watch. However, things may change. Legere is in talks again to sell out to Sprint. Keep your eyes open on that. That's the bad news, but the good news is the rumor he wants to run the merged companies.

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Yeah...I've seen the rumors. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

Having gone from a Watch series 1 to a series 3 (no LTE), my first thought was it looks a bit fatter (but the series 2 probably is the same). But on my wrist, it feels the same. More importantly, the software is FAST. VERY FAST.

Not an earth changer from the first one, but just feels much more responsive. We'll see how the battery is. So far, I'm happy. I immediately put my Nike band on it (the bands with the round holes in it breathes SO MUCH better than the plain silicon ones.

Sold my new refurbished 1st generation Monday and received Watch 3 gps today.
Two things that jump out. The speed is awesome compared to Series 0 and the speaker is a big upgrade on the 3. I worked late so I just got finished setting it up. I plan to cycle once or twice tomorrow or a run.
I use the same customized Watch face and added the heart rate. I like the quicker response finding heart rate and the resting. I’ll need to do some digging on walking heart rate. Not sure if this is auto detecting or not.
I’m looking forward to the heart study app to be released later this fall.
I’ve been two longggggg weeks without my Watch. You never know how much you miss something you really depend on until it’s gone. Oh so true!

harshness said:

A fully exposed solar cell will produce up to .6W/square inch assuming full and direct sunlight. I imagine that hiding the cells behind even a "see-through" OLED display is going have a significant negative impact on power production.

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Here's where a flexible solar cell that could be incorporated into the watch band would come in handy (along with a way to get the power into the SmartWatch).

Roland- there was a rumor out a few weeks ago that Apple is indeed working on a "Smart band" that will add additional battery capacity as well as an underside pulse sensor for additional accuracy on the blood O2 monitor. I typically run 99 -100% on a finger O2 sensor so this is not as important to me as it may be for a smoker in their 50's. I see so many elders with oxygen bottles they haul around. In case you didn't know all the apple watches have a connection behind the the band adapter that is suspect to be built in for that smart band access, meaning it will work with even the original watch. If you take the band off and look behind it you will see the connection point.

Mike- I took a calipers to my daughter's watch3 and it is definitely thicker than the original by almost 3 mm. But the 3 was claimed to be another 0.2mm thicker yet. I was concerned about this but wearing it now for the evening, I got used to it right away.

Also, I see my colored metal armor clip-on protectors fit OK but the shiny plastic ones do not allow me to access the buttons. Been using the watch now for 10 hours and during that time I activated and also tested all my apps and made one LTE phone call talking for a couple minutes. Battery is down to 77%

Foxbat said:

Here's where a flexible solar cell that could be incorporated into the watch band would come in handy (along with a way to get the power into the SmartWatch).

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The flexible cells aren't all that flexible and your color options are solar cell color. If you think about wrapping the band around your wrist, no more than 20% or so is "seeing" the sun (and I mean the sun, not just pretty bright lights) so in effect you're getting maybe part of a watch face worth of exposed cell out of a band that's on your wrist.

I also want to point out that while LCD calculators and stuff can run off small strips in subdued indoor light, the power numbers I quoted are direct sun which is orders of magnitude more energy.

The battery in the Apple Watch 2 is said to have a 205mAh capacity. There's a reserve that is supposed to run the watch for 18 hours but only as a simple watch that you have to activate the display to read. If we assume that 10% of the battery capacity is set aside for that purpose, that leaves about 180mAh for 18 hours of normal function. That's 10mA/hour.

A solar cell to produce that kind of power in direct sunlight is going to have to be around 17 square inches and it is going to have to be pretty much perpendicular to the sun at all times just to keep up with consumption.

For phone calling on the Gen 2, they say the life is around 3 hours so you need a 102 square inch cell to keep up.

We're waaaaay far away from even supplemental powering of an Apple Watch. I sincerely doubt there's much that can be done to bring the radio consumption in line, much less the SoC.

Couple questions-

Where did you get your numbers from? Apple specs? Their 18 hour life on a charge number is way conservative life span and I suspect is based on the convenience of putting on charge every night while you sleep so it is fully charged for the whole waking day. Plus their usage is quite aggressive during the day. Read the usage stats they quote for that 18 hour day. There is no way I have ever used my watch for that level of drain. It is why I typically get double the life that they quote. I am now 19 hours off charge on the watch3 and the battery is at 58%. I will continue to give you stats from the real world of my use so you can compare numbers. Keep in mind I don't talk on the phone 3 hours a day, but I do have email, text messages, and a few other alerts constantly refreshing to the watch and I may spend at minimum an hour of screen on time a day and maybe even 3 hours on a work day reading those pull down emails. Then I have the constant heart monitor running from my Heart monitor app to detect the "irregular heart rhythm" and it plots on an EKG look alike chart. I have a couple of these apps including one that is experimental. But I don't play music, rather maybe 30 minutes of audio books a day. Other than it comes on every time I lift my arm, that is my drain on the watch battery. I think tigerfan would be a more extreme use with his excessive workout monitoring.

I wouldn't say I am a typical Apple spec user but I do use the Apple watch regularly throughout the day far more than just a time piece.

My wife has the smaller 38mm watch with the smaller battery. Her usage is about 24-26 hours but she loves the Minnie Mouse face and we ran a test when she first got it and with a regular watch face her time increased to 33 hours. She uses the email and text often, probably spends about 15 to 30 minutes talking on the phone a day.

Conclusion- I think your conclusion is wrong on whether a solar cell recharging would be effective or not. I don't think present technology solar cell power per sq inch will be able to run the watch indefinitely but if we get a ~300% improvement, that would be worthy of bragging, regardless who invents the solar powered smart watch.

Moore's law- you double the capacity every two years. Well, I would say we have doubled the computing capacity in the past two years but the battery is still the same, Lithium ion polymer technology. The only improvement we have seen is in the power consumption of the new displays and chips, not the power SUPPLY. It has been a Moore's Law laggard so maybe we are due for a major breakthrough. Not in that business so all I can do is hope for something in this area.

Another option is a watch with swappable batteries. It's an old approach but absent better battery capacity, it may be the answer. I can tell you what I do when my routine is different, like when I travel. I have a belt pack battery and a small short cord magnet charger I can use in an emergency. Just take the watch off for 20 minutes and give it a boost while out and about. I admit this has been more of a concept test than something I rely on but it is a backup idea too. I do carry a booster battery with my iphone and have used if many times. I got my wife to carry one in her purse and she has used her's a couple times too.