Geekazine

Geekazine


Is Apple Watch Series 6 Worth the Purchase? Can You Afford It?

September 17, 2020

The other day, Apple made some major changes, and I’m not just talking about just a new watch and iPad. One of the things Apple reinforced was how we are starting to bring our watches into play.

Just like that iconic photo: The person is surrounded by VCR’s, cameras, landline phones, scanners, and other electronics that end up being found in today’s phone, the watch is continuing to gobble up functions to place on our wrists

If they could only do it with a 72 hour battery…

The new series 6 watch looks great, monitors your health, and could even help you get rid of your phone.

Apple Watch Series 6, SE

Welcome to a new series called “The Focus” on Geekazine. This is where I’ll be looking at a technology in a deeper dive. For this series, I’m keeping the focus on mobile devices for now.

Apple Watch Series 6 was introduced at a virtual Apple event. I watched in a Zoom watch party, which made the experience a little better. A good discussion ensued, and we picked apart whether you should get upgrading to the new Apple products.

By the way, a New Apple iPad was also announced, and I’ll be talking about that in another video you can find here.

Let’s deep dive on this watch, because it’s coming out on the 18th. Apple watch is now in 2 versions – 6, and SE. SE is technically the Series 5 with a few extra features.

Series 6 will start at $399, and the SE at $279. You can get Watch Series 6 Here.

Processor on the 6 is the S6, while the SE is S5 (or the previous Apple Watch chip). Both chips are dual-core processors, with the S6 most likely running faster.

Common Features

Both watches, along with the Series 5, 4, and 3, will run WatchOS 7.

All these watches are water resistant up to 50 meters, have LTE model versions (for a little more), built in mic and speaker, Wi-Fi, GPS, and battery support up to 18 hours.

The series 6, 5, and SE all have Bluetooth 5.0, Wireless through the W3 chip, along with Compass, Always on OLED Retina option, 32 GB RAM, and the 44 and 40 mm sizes.

Series 6 Watch Only

The things that set the Series 6 apart from the others include the following:

To start, the new watch will usher in a cableless connection. You will need the magnetic wireless charging cable for power, and either an iPhone, iPad, or watch with cellular service to get any software or updates.

Another new feature is the U1 Ultra Wideband support , which adds spatial awareness. Think of it as a Ping and recieve service between 2 devices running Ultra Wideband. You can find out how far away you are to your phone, and AirDrop will use this service to send and recieve files, as it apparently does it better than Bluetooth. So your music, messages, and more will transfer faster.

The U1 chip is not in every Apple device, though. iPhone 11 seems to be the only other device that has this chip. Even the upcoming iPad Air is without U1, which is a little odd…

Series 6 will add a lot of health features. Tim Cook started the event with some case examples of people’s lives being saved because the watch warned them.

And it’ll be interesting to see a comparison of Apple Heath vs. Google Health, which already has some of those features.

Actually, even my bathroom scale has those features.