WatchOS 5 first take: Walkie Talkie, workout auto detect, and smarter Siri
Convenient communication and fitness features arrive on the Watch this fall.
SAN
JOSE—Just three years after the release of the first Apple Watch, Apple
announced the fifth iteration of its wearable operating system at WWDC
2018.
Unlike iOS updates, most watchOS updates haven't brought
drastic changes to Apple's device in terms of look and feel. WatchOS 5
doesn't radically alter the experience of using an Apple Watch, but it
does add a number of helpful features across different use categories
like fitness, communication, and general life organization. We spent
some time demoing the software update to learn more about the changes.
Workouts and Activity
My
colleague Samuel Axon and I were immediately excited by the
announcement of workout auto detection. (Auto detection allows the Apple
Watch to know when you've been working out even if you haven't
officially started a workout on the watch.)
To begin tracking a
workout, you normally tap on the type of workout you want to record;
doing so immediately launches a three-second countdown timer that ushers
you into your workout. Previously, if you didn't select a workout to
track before you began, the Apple Watch wouldn't record the exercise at
all. In watchOS 5, though, even if you start exercising before
consulting your Apple Watch, the device will detect your movement and
nudge you after three minutes of activity. This haptic feedback prompts
you to tap the screen to officially start that workout. When you do, the
watch switches into workout tracking mode—and even includes the amount
of time it missed before you pressed start.
Plenty
of other wearables, including those from Fitbit and Garmin, have some
form of auto detection. Like those other devices, the Apple Watch can
only auto detect certain exercises: walking, indoor and outdoor running,
pool and open water swimming, rowing, and elliptical training. This is
likely due to the fact that these exercises have recognizable arm
motions. (The only anomaly is walking, which has a 15-minute recognition
threshold to account for people who do short spurts of walking
regularly, such as during their commute.)
Auto detection can
sense the end of a workout, too. I've often finished a strength-training
session at the gym, hopped in my car, and drove home, only to realize
that I never "ended" the workout. Within three minutes of ending your
session, auto detect should stop its workout tracking.
While I
was hoping to see auto exercise recognition or rep counting introduced
in watchOS 5, auto detection nudges the fitness part of the OS forward
in a positive way. Auto detection is standard on most other mid- to
top-tier wearables made by big manufacturers, and it makes the
smartwatch easier to use. Many of us forget to start tracking a workout
on our watches before exercising, and it's a terrible feeling to work
out but not have it "count." Auto recognition should prevent that from
happening, at least with its eight current workout profiles.
Apple has also added two new workout profiles to its long list of trackable activities: yoga and hiking. Both of these used to be labels under the "other" category in the Workout app, but now they have their own widgets. With the widgets comes more accurate data, including better caloric expenditure estimates. Both the yoga and hiking workout profiles take heart rate into account when determining calories burned; hiking takes elevation into account as well. Much like when tracking outdoor runs and walks, tracking a hike will produce an elevation change metric and a map of your route when finished.
The Activity app on the Watch remains dominated by your three rings, representative of how much you moved, exercised, and stood throughout the day. But Apple expanded upon its Activity Sharing feature by adding Competitions to the mix. These are one-on-one challenges that users can do with their friends, and they make completing your rings more of a sport. Users can challenge any friend to a competition; that friend has 48 hours to accept or decline. Competitions last for a week, so they don't get too drawn out. Each user earns points by closing their rings; for each percentage point that you close a ring, you'll get one point in the competition. Closing all three rings gets you 300 points for the day, and you can get even more points by surpassing your goals.
We saw a demo of Competitions on the WWDC stage, and it fits in nicely with the Activity Sharing controls on the Watch in the Activity app. All of your current competitions appear at the top of the screen, and you can scroll down to see the rest of your Activity Sharing contacts and stats.
Walkie Talkie
Arguably the feature that stole the watchOS 5 demo at the keynote was Walkie Talkie. This essentially lets Apple Watch users communicate with each other using short voice messages sent over Wi-Fi or LTE. It's akin to a wearable version of Amazon's Drop-In feature on Echo devices, but less creepy.
In
the private demo we received, watchOS 5 shows a small orange circle at
the top of your watch face to indicate your Walkie Talkie
status—available or unavailable. Walkie Talkie will accommodate any of
the new Do Not Disturb features you set in iOS 12, as well as its own Do
Not Disturb preferences (you can be unavailable for Walkie-Talkie
communication for an hour, while you're in a certain location, etc).
If
you're available, you can select an Apple Watch user in the Walkie
Talkie app. Only Apple Watch users will come up in your suggested
contacts at first, and you can choose select people to use Walkie Talkie
with as well. Pressing the orange "talk" circle on the display lets you
record a message to send to that user. The recipient will get a special
haptic alert when they receive the message for the first time, allowing
them to turn their wrist upward to listen or cover the watch with their
hand to dismiss it.
Despite watchOS 5 still being in beta, the
Walkie Talkie feature worked surprisingly well. The Apple Watches
received recorded messages quickly (within a few seconds of being sent)
and messages played back on the Watch were clear and crisp. It also
conveniently works over Wi-Fi, so it's not limited to Apple Watch Series
3 and LTE users.
Siri and everything else
The
Siri watch face introduced with watchOS 4 gets much more useful in
watchOS 5 and with iOS 12. Apple added more information, meaning you can
see things like sports scores, maps, and heart rate insights directly
on the watch face itself. Depending on your habits, Siri can come up
with timely reminders as well, like telling you to order coffee from
your favorite cafe at the same time each morning.
That ability
extends to third-party apps as well. In watchOS 5, Siri can display
information from third-party apps in addition to all of Apple's native
apps. Route directions from CityMapper appear alongside Weather
forecasts and News headlines, as do reminders to log your breakfast food
in the Lose It! app.
The Siri watch face has been held back by
the limitations of Apple's virtual assistant and by Apple's general
unwillingness to open up parts of its platform to developers.
Third-party app info in the watch face will undoubtably make it more
useful for users who don't live entirely in Apple's ecosystem.
Also,
it will get smarter when Siri gets smarter in iOS 12—the new Shortcuts
you can make on iOS 12 will be available on Siri on the Apple Watch.
Shortcuts let you group actions together, assigning them a voice command
that initiates that group. For example, saying, "Hey Siri, take me
home," might make your iPhone bring up Maps directions to get home from
work, turn on your HomeKit-connected living room lights, set your smart
thermostat to 73 degrees, and begin playing a podcast from the Apple
Podcast app. Shortcuts can only be customized on an iOS device, but Siri
on the Apple Watch will know them. That way you can evoke a Shortcut
without having your iPhone or iPad nearby.
While the Siri watch
face gets a lot of love in watchOS 5, third-party watch faces do not.
Most other smartwatch makers allow third-party developers to make watch
faces for the community to download and use, but Apple still isn't
giving developers this ability. The company is notorious for keeping its
operating systems closed-off to developer tinkering, particularly when
it comes to UI and appearances, and there's no telling if or when we
could see third-party watch face support come to the Apple Watch.
But
Apple threw a bone to podcast lovers everywhere—the Apple Podcasts app
comes to the Watch in watchOS 5, and it looks much like the Apple Music
app. Podcast artwork of your subscribed shows fills the tiny screen,
which you can then scroll through to pick the episode you want to hear.
You can download and listen to podcast episodes on the wearable, and it
will automatically sync your latest episodes for quick listening. The
Now Playing UI still appears when you're playing an episode from your
iPhone, but otherwise the Podcast app will be the main podcast control
center in watchOS 5.
Other improvements coming to
watchOS 5 include the ability for third-party apps to play background
audio, the ability to customize the order of icons in the Control
Center, WebKit support in Mail and Messages, and interactive
notifications. The final two of those features are particularly
interesting. WebKit support lets you pull up linked webpages in the Mail
and Messages app or their notifications. The Apple Watch's display
isn't the best for Web browsing, but sometimes you want to take a look
at a link immediately when it comes in an important message or email.
Interactive notifications let developers program quick actions into
their app's wearable alerts. This means you'll be able to rate a
ride-sharing service within its Apple Watch notification or edit the
number of people in a restaurant reservation when a reminder of that
date gets pushed to your wrist.
WatchOS 5 will be available this
fall to Series 1 and later Apple Watch users who are running iOS 12 on
an iPhone 5S or later. This marks the first time an Apple Watch model
will not be compatible with a new operating system, as the original
Apple Watch will not work with watchOS 5.
Ref: arstechnica
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