on or off.
FIGURE 1-10: If you wear Apple Watch on your left wrist, the side button is on the right side of the watch case. The Digital Crown button is the ridged dial.
Back sensors/charger
On the back of Apple Watch, as shown in Figure 1-11, are multiple sensors to monitor your heart rate, blood-oxygen level, and more. In fact, the addition of blood-oxygen monitoring beginning with Apple Watch Series 6 changed the back crystal underneath the watch; now it’s made up of four LED clusters and four photodiodes. See Chapter 2 for more on the sensors and the charger.
FIGURE 1-11: The sensors on the back of Apple Watch can, among other things, calculate your heart rate and measure your blood-oxygen percentage.
Watch band
Every wristwatch has a band to keep the screen snug on your wrist. You chose a specific band when you bought Apple Watch — a leather strap, a link bracelet, a classic buckle, a silicone band, and so on — but you can change bands later if you desire. Apple continuously introduces new bands, not to mention all the third-party ones available. It’s all about selection and customization.
Using Apple Watch’s Touchscreen
Just as you can interface with a smartphone, tablet, and laptop in different ways, based on the task at hand, Apple Watch gives you three ways to use the small screen on your wrist:
Tap: Tapping Apple Watch with one finger performs the same function that you’d expect on a smartphone: It selects whatever you’re tapping, such as an icon to launch an app, a song to play a track, a link to a website, a photo to enlarge, or virtual buttons, such as on a calculator. On the Home screen, you tap and slide your finger around to move the icon bubbles. A tap is like a left-click on a computer.
Press: Apple Watch knows the difference between a quick tap and a longer press, usually when you need to open some additional menus. Think of a press as a kind of right-click. Tapping a song plays the track, for example, but pressing and holding it opens a set of options: Shuffle, Repeat, Source, and AirPlay. The technology that senses the difference between a tap and a press is called Force Touch.
Swipe: Many areas of Apple Watch — including Dock — and most of the apps you can access let you swipe left and right or up and down to navigate among screens. In Workout mode, for example, you can see time elapsed and heart-rate info, but swipe to the side to pull up music that you can pause and play. Swipe one more time, and you’ll see more options, including the ability to lock your watch so you don’t accidentally tap the screen during rigorous exercise, pause your counter, and so on.Available only on the larger Apple Watch Series 7 is the option to pull up a small QWERTY keyboard (like a computer keyboard’s layout) to type words. The keyboard’s QuickPath feature also supports swiping from letter to letter to form words. Apple says that it uses machine learning to predict the word you’re typing. See Figure 1-12.
FIGURE 1-12: On Apple Watch Series 7, you can swipe between letters and let artificial intelligence predict your next words to speed your typing.
Understanding Apple Watch’s Wireless Functions and Internal Sensors
Oh, Apple Watch, you cleverly hide so much of your magic under your skin.
Apple uses an integrated computer described as a System in Package (SiP, for short) inside the Apple Watch. The SiP includes the main processor (the main engine that drives the watch’s performance), along with memory, storage, support processors for wireless connectivity, sensors, and input/output tech. Yes, that’s a lot of geek speak, which you don’t need to know about to use the watch.
With Apple Watch Series 7, the company is using a new chip called the S7, which can provide wearers all-day battery life yet still power the larger, more advanced watch display.
Apple Watch indeed houses a good number of wireless radios beneath its surface, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC. To understand what they do, check out the following sections.
Bluetooth 5.0
Bluetooth makes a local wireless connection between two or more devices. Just as your wireless headset is paired with your smartphone so you can make hands-free calls, Apple Watch wirelessly communicates with a nearby iPhone to let you see texts on your watch, receive phone calls, control your music on your phone, and more. Bluetooth 5.0 works with devices up to 800 feet away (about 240 meters), which is significantly farther than in earlier versions. If you have an Apple Watch that supports cellular connectivity and pay for the service, you can perform many of these features — making calls, sending texts, and accessing online music — without having an iPhone nearby.
Wi-Fi
Even if you don’t have a cellular model, Apple Watch features Wi-Fi, which gives it online connectivity even when no iPhone is in sight. As long as you’re on a wireless network, such as your home’s Internet connection or a coffee shop’s hotspot, you can access such information as email, live sports scores, mapping information, and so on. A feature called Continuity — introduced in iOS 8 — allows you to receive messages and take calls on multiple iOS devices (such as answering a call on your iPad) as long as you’re in range of your Wi-Fi network, and Apple Watch has this feature too. See Chapter 5 for details on how to take advantage of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Cellular
As I mention previously in this chapter, newer Apple Watch models (Series 6, 7, and SE) are available as GPS or GPS + Cellular. As you can guess, the GPS + Cellular watches cost a little more, but they let you make a call, send a text, and stream Apple Music from your wrist — all without your iPhone. You’ll need to pay your mobile phone provider an extra amount per month (usually about $10) to activate the eSIM inside Apple Watch. That is, you don’t need to insert a physical SIM card, like the one in your iPhone, to access the LTE and UMTS cellular bands.
Be aware, however, that no Apple Watch model supports worldwide roaming. Business travelers can purchase Apple Watch models for specific locales, such as Europe, Asia Pacific, and mainland China.
Beginning with Apple Watch Series 5, emergency calling works in countries outside the United States (see Chapter 5).
NFC