So I now have worn the Apple Watch for a month and have started to utilize more functions it has to offer. If you didn’t see my first impressions see it HERE. I am still impressed with the build quality of the watch. Well put together, light and easy to put on.
Battery has been a major concern from many. Let me ease this concern. Many days I put the watch on before 7:00 AM and several times took it off after 11:00 PM. The lowest the battery has ever been is 46%. While the battery won’t last two days, it will definitely get you through one day.
In my first review I noted that one feature that I wanted was to be able to see weather radar on my watch. While it is not offered by the weather.com app it is available for $3.99 pay app. I have not made that purchase, yet I am guessing that weather.com will offer it sooner or later.
One thing that it took to get set up were the alerts. I initially set the watch up to mirror the phone. I have found in the setting (On the iPhone watch app) that you can customize all alerts. One thing I like is the Taptic engine. A simple explanation is this vibrates (Or really taps) your wrist for alerts. Best part is how quiet it is. My pebble was loud and really was an annoyance. This is completely silent. So now it is set so I can tell simply by this feedback from the watch if it is an email, text, twitter notification or all others. Therefore not distracting me to look at something I can look later at.
Everything is customizable from the main time screen to alerts and more. This puts the information I need most up front. It took a couple of weeks for me to figure out what I wanted where but now I can navigate the information quickly.
The last thing that works well is the handoff. What this does is when you start some action on the watch then want to move to the phone, if you pick up the phone it moves the app/information right from where you were. So for example you take a call on the watch (Yes it has a speaker and microphone) then pick up the phone the call moves to the phone!
Here are some of my favorite features;
- Notifications and feedback
- Health app
- Screen (Very bright and high resolution)
- Interface
- Customization
I wasn’t sure how this was going to function for work. It is great. I can be notified of texts and things, respond on the watch and not have to get the phone out. One question I was ask was does it reduce the iPhone trap? I hadn’t heard this before, what I was told it was when you get your iPhone out to look at a notification then you look at email, texts, Facebook, Twitter and more. Quick answer is yes. You look at the most pertinent information then go back to what you were doing.
Stay tuned for my next installment on the Apple Watch covering the health app and how the Apple Watch performs tracking activities.
Have questions? You can reach Steve at sriat@nex-tech.com.
