It’s been ten years since Apple gave us a taste of the iPhone on our wrists, and lives have been changed. Celebrate a birthday by looking at the ten year life of the Apple Watch.
It’s not much of a leap to say that technology changes lives, but some technology goes further than others.
You wouldn’t leave your house without your phone these days — it’s practically the centre of your digital universe — and it might be the same with a smartwatch.
A second screen experience, it’s your contact to the world of your phone when it sits in your bag, your desk, your luggage, or even just your pocket.
But it didn’t used to be this way. Much like how the iPhone forever changed the smartphone, the Apple Watch may have forever changed the smartwatch and other wearables with it.
For its 10 year birthday and anniversary, we’re diving into the world of the Apple Watch to look at what was, what it does, and what the future could hold.
Take a moment and breathe a little. If you have an Apple Watch strapped to your wrist, you can run the Mindfulness app and do it yourself. Alternatively, just watch the animation below, count to ten, and keep reading. It’s kind of the same thing.
Reflect on how you’re feeling about smartwatches
Depending on how much you connect with technology — and how much you really need a watch — you may not have a wearable in your life. That’s fine. They’re not for everyone.
Ten years ago, they weren’t really for anyone, except maybe folks who wanted to stay fit.
Wrist-worn wearable gadgets have been a thing since Fitbit started pushing beyond its hip-friendly step trackers, and started dabbling with the concept of the smart band, which was basically a smart watch without saying it quite so obviously.
The difference between a “smart band” and a “smart watch” is largely the name and shape: smart bands and smart watches are both small computers designed to show the time and track fitness, but arrive in a slightly different shape and form-factor.
A smart band is thin and long, and looks more like a band or bracelet, while a smartwatch is designed like a watch. It could be circular or more square (a squircle!).
But the idea behind them is roughly the same: a fitness tracker with the time built in, plus support for notifications, messaging, apps, and so on.
Over the past decade, these devices have changed a lot. They’re bigger, last longer, and support more features.
You can make and take calls on them from a nearby phone, listen to music from them with earphones, and even pay for things with them when you’d normally use your debit or credit card, or even your own phone. Some smartwatches even support their own eSIM, allowing calls to be made when a phone isn’t found nearby.
What started in 2015 as monitoring activity in the original Apple Watch has grown to support swimming in the Series 2 in 2016, high heart rates and mobile connectivity in 2017’s Series 3, ECG and irregular heart rate in 2018’s Series 4, and so on. Series 6 in 2020 saw the SpO2 blood oxygen technology and a covid-era handwashing app, while the following year tracked sleep trends and added a mindfulness app in Series 7.
The most recent incarnations have grown to include ovulation estimates, temperature tracking, crash detection, a depth gauge, and a Vitals app.
It has grown to be more than just a timepiece, and comes in a regular model, a less expensive “SE” edition, an option with more durable sapphire glass, a fashion-focused Hermes edition, and a larger and more ruggedised “ultra” variation on the theme with better resistance to the elements, a louder speaker, and a bigger battery.
But they all share the same DNA, and the same idea, albeit at different price points.
Smartwatches are your phone away from your phone. They’re a wrist-worn second-screen experience for the device you can’t leave behind, and they are one of the first gadgets many of us grab when we start the day.
And for some of us, they even save lives.
move your arms.
Watch what they can do today
Today’s Apple Watch tracks a variety of things.
Sure, it tells the time in lots of different ways, one of which we’ve emulated above with your actual time, but it also tracks more than just the earth’s rotation in relation to your timezone.
Like many other wearables, today’s Apple Watch tracks your heart rate, your heart’s electrical activity (ECG), your pulse rate (SpO2), your temperature, your steps, your compass position, and your location with the GPS.
It can also work out whether you’ve been involved in a car accident thanks to the speed and GPS, and you can send for an alert if something happens. That’s something rather special for the Apple Watch, and has led to it being used to save lives.
Only one year ago in 2024, the GPS and satellite SOS feature was used to save a man’s life off the coast of Australia. Airlifted to safety, the Apple Watch had helped save a life, and it’s not alone. It can track a fall and alert the owner, and can track variations in a heart rate to warn its owner that something is wrong.
What a watch can do today is improve your fitness and save a life.
What will they do tomorrow?
Eco-friendly with more health tracking
More watch faces will be on the cards for the Apple Watch in the future, for sure, another which we’ve tried to recreate above.
We’d love to see some more characters beyond the likes of Mickey, Minnie, Buzz, Woody, and Snoopy and Woodstock, but that might just be our inner children and actual children coming out. Ms 3 has requested Elsa and Anna, while Mr Stark requests Rapunzel and Wall-E, though not necessarily at the same time.
While a future with more designerly watch faces are a definite and gradual reality for Apple Watch owners, other features are likely on the cards to improve health tracking.
Blood pressure technology will likely be one of those features, particularly focused on whether its owner has hypertension, while a glucose monitor for diabetics could eventually be on the cards, as well. Both of those technologies seem well placed inside of a watch, but at present, both require their own dedicated gadgets.
Huawei has previously dabbled in a smartwatch that could measure your blood pressure, while Samsung reportedly has a smartwatch-bound blood glucose monitor on the way, as well. We suspect Apple won’t be far behind, and may even manage to get out in front.
Alongside side those technologies, you may want to expect eventual satellite connectivity like the iPhone has and better battery life.
And Apple will likely make them more eco-friendly. As it stands, the Apple Watch Series 10 is reportedly carbon neutral, with 100 percent of the manufacturing electricity from renewable energy sources, while the hardware is made from more than 30 percent recycled materials.
You can likely expect that number to grow over time, with a plan from Apple to move to fully recycled cobalt in Apple-designed batteries by the end of this year.
We have to hope it will be slightly more durable, largely because the glass found in the less expensive models can break rather easily, and be quite costly to fix.
However, in ten years time, hopefully it will also be thinner, lighter, and more capable than ever. And what’s more, it will likely inspire even more competition than ever before, providing even more choices for consumers around the world to consider.
Android users currently miss out on the Apple Watch, with the wearable made for iPhone owners and iPhone owners alone. But we have to hope Apple will one day make the move, or at least get its other brand Beats to make something similar that works across all brands of mobile, as well.
