You can unlock your hotel room, monitor your heart rate and even buy your groceries with the latest product from Apple, but will its features be enough to entice customers to pay the asking price and be satisfied with the battery life?
Going on sale April 24th, with presale and preview sessions beginning April 10th, we will have to wait and see what level of popularity the Apple Watch will gain, especially considering its hot competitors.
The watch will be available in three collections: Apple Sport, Apple Watch, and Apple Edition. With the cheapest model, Apple Sport, starting at $349 and the most expensive model, Apple Edition, starting at a cool $10,000, consumers may look to other impressive smart watches for their wearable. The Pebble, which has been causing a stir in social media with its record breaking Kickstarter numbers is priced at $199 and the Motorola Moto at $250.
The watch needs to be paired with a compatible device – an iPhone 5 or more recent which must be running the latest version of iOS 8 in order to carry out any web-based functions or calls.
The primary feature which was expected but is still disappointing of the Apple Watch is the battery life, up to 18 hours, which is far less than the competing products.
This battery life is based on the assumption that the watch is paired with an iPhone and accounts for 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 30 minute workout with playback music via Bluetooth. Will this be enough? Probably not. We won’t know for sure until the Apple Watch hits sales stands and we hear the reviews from customers first hand.