Hands On WatchOS 6 - An Opinion

Good morning,

Along with iOS 13, Apple announced WatchOS 6 at WWDC. The Apple Watch is one of my favorite Apple products. This year they announced several new features and below I talk about some of the new upcoming features with the Update.

New Watch faces

This year we see 5 new watch faces join us, These are Solar Dial, Gradient, California, Numeral Duo / Mono and Modular compact. My personal favorite watch face to use is the Infograph modular. It’s so useful being able to see this much information all from my wrist and I use it all the time because of that I can see the Modular compact being the most useful for me out of the new watch faces.

This new face allows either an analogue or digital clock along with 2 circular complications and one big complication at the bottom that is similar to the one of the Infograph modular. For those of you who love to simply look at the time on your wrist the Gradient and Numerals Duo / Mono will be great for you. They both only tell the time whilst they can still be customized quite a bit. They look vibrant in colour and you can see pictured the Numerals Duo in Canary Yellow with the new Canary Yellow watch band.

Noise

The Apple watch can now monitor the noise around you, I’ve already got the complication set up on my watch face as It’s nice knowing how loud the environment around me is affecting my hearing. (Not only this but iOS 13 monitors the amount of time you listen with your headphones on loud) It constantly monitors you but with everything Apple none of the audio is ever sent anywhere Apple doesn’t even see it.

Siri

Siri is now even better on the watch, I can’t underestimate how happy I am that I can now use “Hey Siri, What’s this song?” on my wrist! I use this all the time on my phone but have always been wishing I could do it on the watch. The best bit is the fact you don’t even have to say Hey Siri, Just simply raise the wrist. Siri On the watch can also help answer more complex questions now like it could on the iPhone.

APP STORE!

The App store has finally come to the Apple watch, My intial thought was that it was a stupid idea as the screen would be too small. HOWEVER I have completely changed my mind on this. The Apple watch feels a lot more independent now, and it’s great being able to view the apps on the watch. The App store is easy to navigate with the digital crown or even a swipe of the finger. You can easily search the app store by three ways, Dictation, Siri or you can click one of the trending search’s. The app store on the watch is better for developer’s as well as they no longer require to build an app for the iPhone to go with the Apple watch, instead they can do just one independent Apple watch application.

Apps

There’s several new apps too, Including a calculator (Finally!), Audiobooks, Cycle tracking, Reminders has been redesigned to go with the new app on the iPhone and Finally Voice memos.

Now Playing, one of my most used features is now a lot better and can be accessed easily now as it’s on the app screen on the watch and now you can even control your Apple Tv or Homepod using the watch.

Activity

I love closing my rings on the watch and this year there has been some minor updates to the Activity app, Including Trends which looks at your data from the past 365 days. At the moment all my arrows are up which is good so I can’t really give you much information on what happens if it’s down. But from there website I can tell you that it says “If your losing ground your get tailored coaching suggestion’s” This probably means your get motivational notification’s to help you. You can also view your awards In the Apple watch now.

The new WatchOS 6 update is great and if you’re a keen user of the watch like myself you are going to love it. View my slideshow below of screenshots from the OS.