The Apple Watch hasnât gotten more expensive. | Image: Apple
Apple has announced its latest wearable, the Apple Watch Series 8. It includes a new temperature sensor, which Apple says âtakes its commitment to womenâs health even further.â The Series 8 also includes two new motion sensors to detect if youâve been in a severe car crash. Itâll be available starting September 16th, and will cost $399 for the GPS model, and $499 for the cellular model.
The company says it can track temperature changes as slight as 0.1 degrees Celsius and that it checks your temperature every five seconds. The company says that tracking your body temperature overnight can help give you insights into your ovulation cycle, which it can use to enhance the watchâs cycle tracking feature for those who menstruate. The company says that this data is encrypted on the watch itself â an important consideration for anyone tracking their cycles after the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Image: Apple
The Series 8 packs some new sensors into a familiar design.
The company says that its crash detection feature will only run while youâre driving, which helps preserve the watchâs 18-hour battery life. Appleâs also introducing a low power mode, which extends the watchâs battery life to 36 hours â the feature will also be coming to older watches, starting with the Series 4, as long as theyâre running watchOS 9. Enabling the mode will turn off the always-on display and auto-workout tracking, but youâll still get activity tracking and crash detection. Also coming to older watches and the Series 8 is cellular roaming.
Last yearâs model, the Series 7, featured a slightly updated design that made the screen bigger compared to previous models (but did not, as rumors suggested, introduce a radically new look with flat sides). Aside from the redesign, it only included a few new features: faster charging, improved durability, and some new colors.
The Apple Watch Series 8 has a lot of competition. Fitbit recently revamped its smartwatch lineup with the Sense 2, Inspire 3, and Versa 4, which cover a wide range of price points. Garminâs latest generation of smartwatches has also garnered a lot of praise from reviewers. And while the upcoming Pixel Watch and Samsungâs Galaxy Watches arenât really competing for iPhone usersâ wrists, itâs always interesting to see how Appleâs wearable stacks up with the flagships on the Android side.
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