Apple Watch Series 6 - Finally Something New?

The Apple Watch has been one of my favourite pieces of technology, ever. I recently switched to a Samsung Galaxy Fold as my daily driver and the only thing that I miss about my iPhone, is the Apple Watch sync. 

Luckily, I still have my iPhone around but my point here is that while I can indeed switch away from iOS, there’s not really an overall better Smart Watch than the Apple Watch, at least for iOS users.  So, without further ado, here is everything we know, so far, in terms of the Apple Watch Series 6. This is set to be one of the biggest changes to ever come to the Apple Watch!

---

The Story So Far

I have always been a massive fan of the Apple Watch. I remember making videos on it years before it was launched, such as the ‘Leaks & Rumors’ episodes talking about every piece of information we had about Apple’s super secret project. Then we finally got it, the original Apple Watch.

But unfortunately, the first generation, which came out in 2015 and was announced back in 2014, was not great at all. It was pretty slow, the battery life wasn’t anything amazing and it was extremely expensive. Apple even sold that $17,000 18-Karat Gold model.

With the Series 2 in 2016, they dropped the Gold model, they added 50m Water Resistance, up from the 1m for up to 30 minutes that the original model had. They also increased the screen brightness to 1000 Nits, up from 500, and significantly improved the Processor. The Battery even lasted two days now and we got GPS, so the Series 2 was a very big upgrade.

The Series 3 launched in 2017, adding Cellular support so that you can get a network connection without the need for you to have your iPhone with you. It added an even faster Processor, with the S3 Chip being 70% faster than the S2, which was already twice as fast as the S1 inside the original Apple Watch.  It doubled the Internal Storage to 16GB and increased the amount of RAM to 768MB from 512MB. 

Then we had the Series 4 in 2018, which was the biggest upgrade to come to the Apple Watch since the original one was introduced. We got a new design (sort of) with a more rounded frame as well as a much larger Display. Also, it had almost the exact same body, so the screen Bezels got significantly thinner. We got another new Processor, the S4, with double the performance of the S3, an ECK Meter, an improved HR Monitor and Haptic Feedback on the Digital Crown itself. This was such a big upgrade.

Finally, last year we got the Series 5, which was essentially just a Series 4 with an Always On-Display, something that I’ve been requesting ever since the original Apple Watch. Having said all of this, the Series 6 should be a fairly big upgrade, considering that we haven’t had once since 2018.

---

Design

When it comes to the design, we’ve yet to see reports that state that Apple is working on a major redesign, similar to what we saw around the same time two years ago, ahead of the Series 4’s release. This means that it is extremely likely that we would see the exact same design that we’ve seen with the Series 4 and the Series 5, just possibly with some more finishes.

The Series 5 introduced Titanium as a brand new finish and also brought back Ceramic, which we hadn’t seen since the Series 3. We wouldn’t be surprised if Apple ends up introducing one more material option, or at least some different colour options, for the materials that we have now. I’m not sure about you but I think a Ceramic Forest Green or Midnight Blue would look incredible.

Regardless, there is a small possibility that Apple will indeed tweak the design. Ever since the original Apple Watch came out, we always wanted Apple to release a circular Apple Watch, we’ve actually modelled our very own. Whether Apple does this with the Series 6, Series 7 or even later, we don’t know yet.

This is our concept for the next Apple Watch, will it finally come full circle?

We based this design off of the current Series 4 & Series 5. We kept the same design language while at the same time, making the body circular. This means that we still have the same style of the Digital Crown, with the Red Ring and the Haptic Engine. We still have the same Heart-Rate Monitor but with additional functionality, which we will be covering shortly. We still have the same iconic circular Apple Watch Faces, which now look better than ever before on a circular Display. Also, we based all of the colours on the current Apple Watch series 5 offering.

Do leave a comment down below, on what do you think about a Circular Apple Watch and if you want to see more concepts such as this, definitely subscribe and also follow our second Instagram account (@ZONEofCONCEPTS) for more 3D Concepts such as this.

But unfortunately, the Series 6 is likely to look extremely similar to the Series 5. 

---

Display

When it comes to the Display, ‘EconomicDailyNews’ reported back in July 2019 that the 2020 Apple Watch could be getting a microLED Display. This is something that ‘DigiTimes’ also reported back in 2018. Unfortunately, we haven’t had any more recent leaks on this, so do take this with a grain of salt.

Essentially, microLED Displays are the biggest Display innovation since OLED. This is not be confused with miniLED, which is what the November 2020 iPad Pro’s are said to feature, as well as the upcoming 16 inch MacBook Pro’s. Long story short, LCD panels are the most inferior Display technology that we have now. 

In LCD panels, the Pixels only provide the colour and not the backlight. Therefore, you need to add a separate backlight layer. This means that the Display will be thick and will consume a lot of power. Also, you cannot have perfect Black Levels, if you have a white text on top of a black surface, the backlight will still have to be fully on in order for the text to be visible, which means that blacks will always look greyish or blueish.

Then we have OLED Displays in which, unlike LCD’s, the Pixels can provide both the colour and the backlight. This means that OLED Displays can be very thin, they consume very little power and they have perfect black levels as you can individually turn the Pixels on and off. The only problem with OLED is that they can easily burn, so their life span is very limited. 

Then we have miniLED, which is a fairly new technology and is what Apple is using in their Apple Pro Display XDR. Essentially, it is still an LCD panel, but the backlight is split into multiple smaller zones, 576 in this case, which can individually turn on and off. It still has the downsides of an LCD panel but the black levels are much improved.

And finally, we have microLED, which is essentially OLED with extremely tiny inorganic LED’s, rather than organic LED’s. This means that it has all the advantages of OLED, but without the burn-in issues. Not only that, but microLED Displays can be even thinner than OLED, with even lower power consumptions while also being much brighter. These microLED Displays are really the future and the Apple Watch is indeed a very good candidate for this technology. At the moment, microLED is even more expensive than OLED, so Apple cannot implement this on devices that have a large Display. If you take a look at the first Apple Watch, it was also Apple’s very first device to come with an OLED Display. Whenever Apple is implementing microLED, it will very likely come to the Apple Watch first and is looking like it could come this year.

---

Specs

What other changes could we see with the next Apple Watch?

Moving on to the specs, the Series 6 will finally feature a bump in performance. The Series 5 did come with the Apple S5 Processor, but this was actually just an S4 with a built-in Compass and the new Display Driver for the Always-On Display. So, we actually haven’t had a performance boost, since the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018. Here’s a fun fact, my Series 4 was perfectly smooth, I had zero issues in terms of its performance. 

However, the Series 5 actually lags on me quite a bit. It might be because of the Always-On Display. The Processor has to keep updating that all the time, albeit at just 1Hz, compared to 60Hz. But still, the CPU is running more intensively than on the Series 4 and the RAM is also used more because of the Always-On Display.

Ming-Chi-Kuo did report that the Series 6 will indeed be getting some bumps in performance. This not only includes the CPU getting faster, but apparently WiFi and Cellular speeds will also be improved. Kuo also stated that the Circuit Board will now be made out of LCP (Liquid Crystal Polymer) as opposed to Polyimide or PI. Dongshan Precision, Avary Holding and Flexium Interconnect will be the primary suppliers.

---

Special Features

Moving on to the Special Features, this is where we’ll see the biggest changes.

Blood Oxygen Level Meter

The first one will be a Blood Oxygen Level Meter. Based on leaked iOS 14 code that ‘9to5mac’ managed to find, we now know that Oxygen Level Saturation is something that Apple plans to include in the Series 6. Essentially, if the Oxygen in your blood has a level under 95%, you will get a notification alert, similar to how you’re now getting an alert when your heart-rate is abnormally high. Even the original Apple Watch from 2015 had hardware capable of measuring the amount of Oxygen in your blood, ‘iFixit’ found that from their teardown. 

However, for some reason, this functionality was never enabled. Some reports are saying that this is because Apple never got the FDA approval for this, so it could be that the Series 6 will now get an improved hardware version of that or watchOS 7 will actually enabled Oxygen Level Saturation measurement on all the previous Apple Watch models that support it as well.

watchOS 7

Speaking of watchOS 7, ‘9to5mac’ managed to find some more code that points towards some upcoming features. These include the ability to share your Watch Face with other users and a brand new Infograph Pro Watch Face that will include a Tachymeter, which will tell you the speed at which you’re traveling.

Aside from this we would also be getting a new Countries Flag Watch Face, which will allow you to pick a flag and have a Watch-Face on top of it. This can easily be done at the moment via the Photos Watch Face.  Speaking of the Photo Watch Face, it is said to be getting an improvement that allows you to select photos from a shared album, rather than just your own albums.

Parental Controls will also be added, as well as School-Time for restricting some Apple-Watch apps for when a child is in school. We are also said to be getting an improved Control Centre with new toggles and a brand new Architecture for apps, which will remove the extensions base for apps entirely, meaning that Apps will now fully run on the Apple Watch rather than being extensions to iPhone apps. 

According to ‘The Verifier’ who claims that they have some high level sources inside Apple, watchOS 7 will only work on the Apple Watch Series 3 and newer, with support for the Series 1 & 2 finally being dropped. 

Sleep Tracking

Now, the third big new feature of the Series 6 is said to be Sleep Tracking. According to some more code found my ‘9to5Mac’, Sleep Tracking will finally be included. As reported by Bloomberg, this will indeed be a feature implemented at the hardware level, rather than just being a software update that will work on older models.

Apple will need to heavily improve the Battery Life, which according to these reports, they wouldn’t be doing, at least not to the amount that will make the battery last for a week. We don’t fully know how Apple will address this, but it is likely that they will use a new low power Chip that will monitor the sound and the movement alongside your heart-rate, when you are asleep. Chances are that you will have to charge it in the morning, before you go to work, as you will need to wear the Apple Watch while you’re sleeping in order for Sleep Tracking to work. 

What would TouchID on an Apple Watch look like?

TouchID

A very strange report, coming from ‘The Verifier’ once again, claims that the Series 6 could be getting TouchID. This would either be integrated into the Crown or even integrated into the Display panel itself. That would be amazing but, they’re also saying that this could be a 2021 feature and might just be something that the Series 7 will come with. 

Kids Mode 

Additionally, ‘9to5Mac’ found references in the leaked iOS 14 code to a brand new Kids Mode, which will replace the current activity rings with something more suitable for kids. Rather than tracking the amount of calories burned, these will just track the amount of movement and will be tweaked with a child’s’ activity pattern in mind. This is a watchOS 7 feature so it will very likely come to all the models from the Series 3 upwards. 

Improved Water Resistance

Finally, Ming-Chi-Kuo reported that the Series 6 will be getting an improved Water Resistance. At the moment, we get up to 50m submersion, which is pretty nuts. However, Apple themselves state on their own website that you shouldn’t use it for scuba diving or any other activities that involve high velocity water or submersion below shallow depth.  This could be fixed with the Series 6. 

---

Battery Life

Battery Life is said to be improved with the Series 6, now that we’re getting Sleep Tracking. Whether this is done by just increasing the Battery size, or by the new microLED Display, or even both, we do not know. But, Apple will have to do something as the Battery Life on the Series 5 was noticeably worse than on the Series 4 before it. 

---

Release Date 

And finally, when it comes to the Release Date, we would expect pretty much the same as always, September 2020. However, this year we might actually see a slight delay because of the current outbreak situation. With this in mind,  it could be pushed to November, or in the worst case scenario, to March 2021 or further, although I don’t think it would be delayed that heavily.

---

Conclusion

So, in the end, what are my thoughts on the Apple Watch Series 6?

Well, it looks like the biggest new feature that most of you will care about will be Sleep Tracking. Aside from that, things such as the new Watch Faces, the Oxygen Level Meter and Kids Mode are likely to be added to some of the previous Apple Watch models as well.

If you were hoping for a major redesign, you might have to wait until the Series 7, or even later, until we finally get something similar to our render.

Apple Watch Series 5 - Review

---

Let me give you some context before I begin on this article, I’ve been a huge Apple Watch fan myself. I couldn’t wait for the Apple Watch to be released, I even made a few Leaks & Rumors episodes on the “iWatch”, way before it even got announced.

I then used the original for a year, the Series 2 for two years, the Series 3 for three weeks as I ended up returning it since the improvements weren’t big enough from the Series 2. I then used the Series 4 for a year and now I’ve got the Series 5.

But rather than just doing a usual review of the Series 5, I want to to talk about my entire Apple Watch experience in general

So get those snacks and drinks ready and here are the five main roles of the Apple Watch for me!

---

WRIST PHONE

The ability to make calls on the Apple Watch means that it almost negates the need for a phone

So starting off the Apple Watch is essentially a smartphone attached to your wrist. I have the Series 5 with Cellular support which means that it’s always connected even when you’re not on WiFi or close to you iPhone. I can make or receive phone calls, I can navigate maps, I can check my emails and constantly get notified whenever I get any new messages on social media.

Really, aside from a Camera, the Apple Watch is a full fledged smartphone attached to your wrist. Especially now with watchOS 6, we have a the full Apple Watch App store directly on the Apple Watch, so you no longer need your iPhone to download apps to it as you can do it directly from the watch itself.

However, even though it has pretty much all the functionality that a smartphone has, it is not a smartphone replacement, as you do need an iPhone to set it up and it does not work on Android in any way.

In my case, I did end up leaving my iPhone behind quite a few times when I would go out and just take my Apple Watch. I actually felt even more connected with the real world, because I didn’t have a display to constantly check, yet still getting important notifications and the ability to make a phone call, in case of an emergency. 

The only thing that I felt I was missing from having my iPhone with me, was the camera, but aside from that, this a smartphone attached to your wrist.

PERSONAL DOCTOR

I use the phrase loosely but the Series 5, just like Series 4 before it, features the 2nd generation Heart Rate monitor, which is faster and more reliable than the 1st generation that the first three Apple Watches had. 

The 2nd gen Heart Rate monitor measures your heart rate constantly, but you can check it manually.

Your heart rate is measured every few minutes and constantly, whenever you’re doing a workout. On top of this, the Series 4 and 5 can also take your ECG (Electrocardiogram), you know that graph that shows you exactly how your heart beats, yeah that one! 

And according to multiple tests and studies the HR monitor and ECG Meter are as accurate as the actual medical devices used in hospitals which is very impressive.  Now, there are now some other smartwatches that can do this, some hybrid watches from Withings and the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, but the Apple Watch was the first one to have this functionality with the Series 4. 

And there are a few more things that the Series 5 can do.

The Series 4 for example had something called ‘Fall Detection’, where if you fell over and didn’t move, it would automatically call the emergency services. This is extremely useful and in some cases it even save some lives. There were quite a few articles of incidents like this happening. The same thing applies to the ECG meter. The Apple Watch can detect Atrial Fibrillation, which is a heart condition that cases an irregular and abnormally fast heart rate. Quite a few users have reported that after the Apple Watch gave them the message that Atrial Fibrillation was detected in their heart they went to the doctor who immediately ran some tests on the patients and found that they needed immediate surgery. And this ended up saving their lives.

So the Apple Watch can actually save lives just on its own, which is something that regular tech devices don’t usually do. 

Now, the Series 5 did actually get a big improvement over the Series 4’s life saving capabilities and you can now make SOS calls even outside of the country that you bought it from. With the Series 4, it only had cellular antennas for the country that you bought it from, which meant that if you were using it in a different country roaming wouldn’t work at all. But with the Series 5 is does work for SOS calls only! So now if you’re on holiday in Spain or somewhere and you fall or get injured, your Apple Watch will automatically call the local emergency services! 

The new compass feature will come in handy if you get lost and have no cellular signal

Something else that was added to the Series 5 was a built-in compass. This is something that we’ve had on smartphones since the iPhone 3Gs came out in 2009 10 years ago, but this is the first time we’ve had it on the Apple Watch. What this does is that it allows you to see the direction that you’re facing, compared to magnetic north. In Maps you can now see the exact direction that you’re facing, which is extremely useful if you do use the Apple Watch to quickly navigate the streets. In addition you can also have the separate compass app, which is again very useful for when you’re outdoors, and let’s say you maybe get lost and you have no cellular signal this can help you get back on your track. 

GYM COACH

The third main role of the Apple Watch is being your personal Gym Coach.

You have the famous activity ring, where the Blue ring represents the time you stood up, the red ring represents how much movement you did during the day, while the yellow ring represents the actual workouts and heavy duty exercises that you’ve done during the day. The idea is that you fill all three, every day, in order to stay in shape and be healthy. You do get achievements for completing these, so the Apple Watch always tries to keep you motivated.

The workout app allows you to track workouts including your working heart rate, length of workout and calories burnt

Then when you do go to the gym, you do have a built-in dedicated workouts app that has a ton of different workouts to choose from, from running, to walking, cycling, and then you can even add some more specific ones such as Tennis or American Football. The Apple Watch will even sync up with some gym equipment in order to save the data from those running speeds and distances, for example, onto the Watch. Once you’re in a workout it will constantly track your HR, the amount of calories you’ve burnt and you can easily go to your favourite songs by swiping left and right to play some music.

Speaking of music, the Apple Watch will connect to your Bluetooth headphones, no matter which ones you have, so you don’t need to have AirPods by the way. Although the AirPods with this is fire! 

Also even if you do not have the cellular model of the Apple Watch, you can in fact download music directly onto your Apple Watch for offline playback. You can easily do this from the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, and the Series 5 also has 32GB of internal storage up from 16GB on the Series 4, so now you can store twice the number of songs.

The Series 5 is now water resistant up to 50M

Something else which is useful when it comes to exercise and the Apple Watches is that starting from the Series 2, all Apple Watches are now water resistant up to 50M of depth. This means you can easily take them swimming, even diving. I’ve had them in sea water and they were absolutely fine! Before you go into the water you activate the water mode or the swimming workout in the workouts app, and then when you get out of the water you rotate the crown and the Apple Watch will make a noise and eject the water that got inside, really cool stuff! 

So the Apple Watch is perfect for swimming and doing any outdoor or indoor activities. But with the built-in GPS and cellular, this is also the perfect device to carry around you for when you’re running.

PERSONAL DESIGNER

Now one of my favourite features of the Apple Watch is that you can really make it your own. Which funnily enough is quite the opposite of what Apple stands for. Apple has usually been the company that offered one All-In-One Desktop design, one laptop design, one phone design and one tablet design.

But recently they’ve started becoming more accepting to the fact that everyone wants a slightly different thing. So we now have three iMac models to choose from, two sizes for the regular one and the iMac Pro which unfortunately, aside from the colour, the design is identical. There are also two laptop choices now the MacBook Pro and the Air, each in multiple colours, and two different sizes for the Pro. We now have four iPhones to choose from, again each in multiple colour options, and even multiple sizes in the case of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 11 Pro. And finally we also have four different iPads to choose from now, each in multiple colours and even 2 sizes for the iPad Pro. 

So Apple’s finally offering us more and more choice. But really, there is no other Apple product that offers more choice than the Apple Watch does.

The different case materials you can purchase the Series 5 in (From top left: Aluminium, Ceramic, Stainless Steel, Titanium)

First off you choose the size, 40mm or 44mm case. Then you choose the material that that case is made from, and here you have four materials; Aluminium, Stainless Steel, Titanium and Ceramic. And the first 3 even come in multiple colours to chose from. Aluminium comes in Silver, Space Grey and Gold. Stainless Steel comes in Silver, Space Black and Gold and Titanium comes in Regular and Space Black. 

The Titanium is the brand new casing material now and it’s a bit of an odd one because it’s more expensive than the Stainless Steel models are but it sits right in between the Aluminium and the Stainless Steel model, when it comes to looks and feels. It is lighter than the Stainless Steel model is, but slightly heavier than the Aluminium. For example, for the 44mm model, the Aluminium weighs 36.5g, the Titanium is 41.7g and the Stainless Steel is 47.8g. Personally I couldn’t really tell that much of a different between the two in terms of weight. Even when it comes to the texture, the Titanium one looks closer to the Aluminium than to the Stainless Steel. The Stainlesss Steel has this glossy and in my opinion more premium look to it, so the black stainless steel is my favourite Apple Watch case. 

But like I said, you do have nine different case colours and materials to chose from, so you get plenty of choice. 

And then you have the bands. So not only are the bands fully compatible with every generation of the Apple Watch ever released but Apple offers eight different bands to choose from, each with multiple colour options which Apple also refreshes every few months or so. But even if you don’t like Apple’s selection that’s fine, you don’t even have to stick with Apple’s own bands. There are many other 3rd party options that not only offer better quality that Apple’s own bands, but also an even larger selection, such as BandWerk.

TIME KEEPER

And finally the 5th big feature for me, when it comes to the Apple Watch is that it’s the a very good time keeper. You get thirty one Watch Faces to choose from, with more and more being added in every watchOS update, which is in September every year. Not only that, but whenever you select a watch face, you can customise it even more. You can change the style of it, the size of the actual clock on some of them, the colour of the second hand, there is just a ton you can do with them

The watch face is entirely customisable so you can put whatever you like on it using third party apps

On top of this you can even add complications, which are basically widgets onto the watch faces themselves, to get not just quicker access to things such as workouts or music, but also have more information displayed on the watch face. Other things you can get are things like when it is going to rain, the UV Index, Podcasts, pretty much anything you want. And yes, you can even add complications for the 3rd party apps that you have installed, so the selection here is just massive! 

In Always-On mode the clock face with dim and go into a black and white version of your watch face to conserve battery

Now the Series 5 did finally add something quite big in terms of keeping time, and that is an Always On Display. Now, there is a lot of fuss about this, however Android smartwatches have had this for many years now so it’s nothing new for a smartwatch, but it Is definitely new for the Apple Watch. The way it works is that when you’re putting the Apple Watch to sleep manually or it just goes to sleep by itself the display won’t turn off anymore, instead it will still show you the watch-face, just with a lower brightness. Also, if you have a bright watch face, with lots of colour and white accents, your watch face will slightly change and the animations will be turned off, in the Always-On Display. Apple did include an LTPO display or a low power display in this Apple Watch to make the Always-On Display possible, but what Apple didn’t mention is that the Series 4 also had this very same display technology.

So then why don’t we have an Always-On-Display in the Apple Watch Series 4? 

Well the Series 4 lacks the new display controller that allows the Series 5 to dynamically adjust the refresh rate from 60Hz down to just 1Hz. This means that when you’re not using it, in Always-On mode, the Apple Watch will refresh its display every second, rather than 60 time a second, like it normally does, and this does help conserve batter life.

Speaking of the battery life, at the end of the day with my Series 4 I had about 60% battery life left which was nuts! This meant that in quite a few cases, I even used my Apple Watch for two days straight without charging it. With the Series 5 however, with the Always-On Display on, in my first few days I only had about 15% left at the end of the day which was quite bad. That was without me even going to workout, because if I did that, especially with GPS and cellular turned on, it would’ve died on me mid-day.

However, after about 1-2 weeks of use the battery life started improving considerably. So now, I actually end up the day with about 50% batter left. Still not as good as my Series 4 was, but much much better than my Series 5 was in the first few days. 

So if you’re experiencing issues with the battery life, just use it for a few days until all the files get indexed, and it will improve.

CONCLUSION

Ok, so in the end…should you get an Apple Watch Series 5?

Well, if you already have a Series 4 – absolutely not. You’re just getting an always on display and a compass which you’ll probably never use, so it’s just not worth it for that.

But if you have a Series 3 or earlier – the Series 5 is a very VERY good upgrade.

Not only are you getting a brand new design, a larger display, but you also get the ECG meter, an improved HR monitor, fall detection, a much faster processor which the Series 5 also has btw – yes the Series 4 and 5 have the exact same processor. 

And you’re also getting the always on display.

Now if you don’t have an Apple Watch at all, again the Series 5 is a very strong choice since now we finally have that always on display that many android smartphones have had.

But if you don’t need one right away, the Series 6 will very likely come with a brand new design, next September.