Apple today previewed watchOS® 7, bringing advanced personalization tools and powerful new health and fitness features to the world's most advanced smartwatch.
Face detection and sharing settings take personalization to the next level and sleep analysis features, automatic hand washing detection, additional training types (such as dance) and a new hearing health feature they offer more information on global health care and are designed with privacy in mind.
Bike rides are even more fun with precise Maps directions on your wrist and Siri offers language translation.
Now the spheres are shared
The watch faces are a key part of the watch, offering valuable information at a glance, and allowing customers to personalize their Apple Watch.
watchOS 7 offers new ways to discover and share unique combinations to configure the watch according to the activities and lifestyle of each user, from parents with babies to surfers, tennis players or photographers. The infinite possibilities of customization, with the related complications, can be shared by Messages or Mail, discovered in the App Store © or also thanks to the links on websites and social networks.
watchOS 7 updates the watch faces with more customization options and better access to the most used apps. The Chronograph Pro dial has an impressive and ultra-precise design, with a tachymeter to calculate speed based on the distance traveled in a given time, the Photos dial allows you to add color filters, and the XL dial opens up the possibility of adding a complete complication.
Developers can now offer more than one complication per app in a single domain. For example, Glow Baby can display multiple complications on a single watch face with data on bottle, breastfeeding, feed stats and baby's sleep time, and Dawn Patrol shows surfers information about tides, wind speeds and water temperatures in your favorite places.
To dream
watchOS 7 brings sleep analytics to Apple Watch to give users a comprehensive sleep view with tools to help them sleep better, go to bed at a set time, create a bedtime routine, and reach their goals of sleep.
The Apple Watch uses the watch's accelerometer micro-movements, which vary according to breathing during sleep, to detect that the user is asleep and record hours of rest each night.
In the morning, the user will be able to access the data of the previous night, with information on the time spent awake and asleep. You will also be able to see a trend chart for the entire week.
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, having a bedtime routine helps us sleep. Wind Down lets you use Apple Watch and iPhone to create a personalized bedtime routine, with options such as setting an atmosphere in the Home app, listening to soothing sounds, or using a meditation app. In Sleep mode, Apple Watch turns on Do Not Disturb and automatically dims the screen at night.
To make waking up more pleasant, Apple Watch can use a silent touch alarm or faint sounds, and the display shows the current battery level.
Based on your personal charging habits, Apple Watch will remind you to charge your watch before going to bed if it detects too low a battery one hour before bed.
Sleep data is encrypted on both device and iCloud with iCloud sync, and the user is always in control of their information.
Automatic hand washing detection
Washing your hands well for at least 20 seconds can prevent the spread of the disease. Apple Watch uses motion sensors, microphone and machine learning to detect motion and sounds related to hand washing, which is a tremendous advance in the wearable industry.
As soon as it detects that the user is washing their hands, it activates a 20-second timer and alerts you if it finishes early. The Apple Watch can also remind the user to wash their hands when they get home.
The Health app on the iPhone will show how often and for how long the user washes their hands, along with information on the importance of hand washing in relation to personal health. Sounds used to detect hand washing are not automatically recorded or stored in the Health app or Apple Watch.
Types of training and fitness apps
The Workout app is one of the most popular on Apple Watch and watchOS 7 allows you to record four new types of workouts thanks to powerful custom heart rate and movement algorithms: Core Training, Dance, Functional Strength Training and Cooldown.
To correctly record calorie consumption, Apple Watch uses an advanced data fusion, with information from the heart rate sensor and the accelerometer and gyroscope, which allows you to measure the movements of the arm in relation to the characteristic body of the dance. This type of training has been validated and tested with the four most popular dance styles for exercise: Bollywood, cardio dance, hip-hop and Latin.
The Activity app has been redesigned for iPhone and renamed Fitness, with a simplified view of daily activity data, workouts, rewards and activity trends on one card and activity sharing and activity competitions on another.
court hearing
watchOS 6 introduced the Noise app, which measures ambient noise levels in the environment using the microphone and duration of exposure, and watchOS 7 takes hearing health care a step further with headphone volume notifications.
Thus, customers can see the volume of what they hear with headphones on their iPhone, iPod touch © or Apple Watch and know if the volume could affect their hearing in the long term.
The Apple Watch informs the user that it has reached the weekly limit for listening with headphones calculated according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, which determines that a person can listen to a volume of 80 decibels for approximately 40 hours per week without his hearing ability is affected
Customers can also see how long they have been exposed to high decibel levels each week from the Health app on iPhone and check the maximum volume of the headphones. Audio from the headset's audio notification feature is not recorded or stored in the Health app or Apple Watch.
Other new features of watchOS 7
- For even more cycling fun, cycling instructions can be viewed directly on the wrist. The signs are large so they are easy to read and the maps can indicate when it is advisable to get off the bike or when it is better to take the stairs to save time. The user can use options such as avoiding major slopes and choosing the fastest or most direct route.
- Customers can now use Siri to translate multiple languages on their wrist. The dictation function works on the device thanks to Apple's Neural Engine to provide faster and more accurate results when dictating messages, among other things, and the Apple Watch supports Siri Message Alert. The Shortcuts app also comes to Apple Watch and users can access it as a hassle.
- Developers can create graphical complications with SwiftUI ™, and with new development tools like Xcode® Previews, designing them is easier than ever.
- New complications for native features include CameraRemote, Sleep, and Shortcuts.
- New mobility metrics in the Health app include: low intensity cardio, walking speed, stair descending speed, stair climbing speed, distance walked in six minutes, double support time, stride length and asymmetry. This data is used by healthcare professionals to measure a patient's range of motion based on their age. Previously, it was only possible to measure them in the laboratory, but now they can also be measured via the Apple Watch and iPhone. Developers such as Zimmer Biomet, a bone and muscle health company, can use this type of data to treat their patients and in management tools like mymobility.
Privacy
Privacy is very important to Apple and even more so when it comes to health related data. Hence, all health benefits are designed with privacy in mind. Health data is encrypted on both device and iCloud with iCloud synchronization and the user is always in control of their information
Availability
The watchOS 7 developer beta is now available to Apple Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. For the first time, a public beta will be released for watchOS users next month at beta.apple.com. watchOS 7 will be available this fall as a free update to Apple Watch Series 3, Apple Watch Series 4, or Apple Watch Series 5 paired with an iPhone 6s or later with iOS 14 or later. Some features may not be available in all regions / languages or on all devices. Benefits are subject to change. For more information, users can visit apple.com/watchOS/watchOS-preview.
