As soon as Apple launched its watches, they gained huge popularity, however, they lacked one feature: Independence. For the Apple GPS to work, an iPhone always needed to be on the radar. With the newest watches, the case is reversed.
In 2015, GPS was first launched on an iPhone watch. Back then, the GPS did not work at all unless an iPhone was present. So when users went running or exercising, they needed their iPhones as well as their Apple watches for the GPS to work. While this was an upgrade from the no-GPS phase, it still wasn’t convenient.
Then in the Series 2, Apple watches claimed to have GPS that did work independently, but still relied on the iPhone when it was near. The feature was to provide longer battery life by preserving the battery used by an Apple watch when using GPS independently. This was an upgrade too, but still not quite there.
At last, Apple has announced that the newest three models will be completely independent of the iPhone concerning the GPS. These models include Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch SE 2.
The change was discovered by ‘Verge’ and a sports tech blogger recently. Apple added the documentation explaining the feature last week to its site, which was then found out and announced publicly. While we do love the feature, we are a little skeptical about the battery life of the newest Apple watches.
To combat this concern, one of the three models – the Apple Watch Ultra has a heavy battery that runs twice the time that the previous models did. Hence the Ultra can support this feature. We are concerned about the other two models although, since their hardware isn’t much different than the last few models.
It was also noted that the latest Apple watch, the Apple Watch Ultra, also employs Dual Band GPS Frequency. This is a feature that is available only on the latest iPhone.
We are glad to see Apple making such big leaps with its newest devices and it increases our expectations now. We hope to see Apple bringing in more exciting features soon!
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