Apple officially took the wraps off its next-generation smartphone at a launch event in California, USA. The company announced the new Apple Watch Series 4, which comes with a larger display and thinner body compared to the previous-generation Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch Series 4 has been redesigned and re-engineered, claims the company. The new smartwatch comes in two sizes — 40mm and 44mm. The display is over 30 percent larger and integrates into a thinner and smaller case.
The Digital Crown now offers haptic feedback, providing a mechanical and responsive feel through incremental clicks. The wearable device is powered by the next-generation S4 chip with a custom 64-bit dual-core processor, which is claimed to deliver twice the speed while maintaining the same all-day battery life.
The Apple Watch Series 4 is running watchOS 5 that the company says offer advanced activity and communications features. For health-related features, along with a new accelerometer and gyroscope, which detects hard falls, there’s also an electrical heart rate sensor that can take an electrocardiogram (ECG) using the new ECG app.
The ECG app takes advantage of the electrodes built into the Digital Crown and new electrical heart rate sensor in the back crystal. It can classify if the heart is beating in a normal pattern or whether there are signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib). All recordings and noted symptoms are stored in the Health app in a PDF that can also be shared with physicians.
It comes with a speaker that is 50 percent louder and has been optimized for phone calls, Siri, and Walkie-Talkie. The microphone on the smartwatch has been relocated in order to reduce echo for better sound quality.
Apple says that all health and fitness data is encrypted on-device and in the cloud. Coming to the battery, the battery life on Watch Series 4 is the same as before — 18-hours.
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The Apple Watch Series 4 starts at $399 in the US for GPS model while the GPS + Cellular version of the Watch Series 4 starts at $499. Along with the three aluminum finishes anodized in Silver, Gold, and Space Gray color, the Apple Watch Series 4 now comes in a Gold stainless steel with Milanese band, joining the Silver and Space Black stainless steel models.
