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Second day with Apple Watch: Still sketchy

Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

Trivia Crack routes you to start a game on the iPhone.


LOS ANGELES — After two days with the new Apple Watch digital device, I'm still frustrated.

Did Apple design a beautiful fashion statement with a gorgeous screen?

No question.

Is the intuitive usability of the iPhone there?

Not yet. At least not for me. It's still a bumpy ride.

On my first day, I complained about endless passcode nags, a screen that was dark way too often and poor battery life.

On Day Two, I learned the root of the passcode problem. If the watch leaves your wrist, every time you access it, you have to type in a passcode. So if you pass it around the room to show your friends, you'll be typing in the passcode over and over.

On Day One, the watch band wasn't tight enough initially — which also caused me to have to type in the passcode over and over.

Battery life on my first day with the watch was seven hours, not the 18 hours Apple promises, although to be fair, it's a review watch that Apple says wasn't fully charged. On Day Two, I was 100% charged at 9 a.m. and at 38% by 1 p.m.

Apple says this is because I am such a heavy user — I had downloaded about 10 apps and was testing them out at Target, Chipotle and other locations in San Francisco.

We'll see how Saturday's full charge and no app downloads go.

But the main issue for me continues to be usability.

How do you navigate this thing? It's just not as simple as the home screen and swipe controls of an iPhone and iPad.

So much so that I couldn't help but notice how Apple posted 11 videos on its website Friday showing consumers how to work with the Watch, everything from receiving and sending text messages to changing the clock face and monitoring your activity.

The Watch is best when it comes to telling time, looking cool and sending and receiving notifications. These work flawlessly, and if Apple had just left it at that, I'd say the watch was a home run.

The Achilles' heel are the apps. Apple has promoted an iPhone-like app experience on a product that simply can't handle it — at least for now, and way too many of the apps are slow, buggy or just unresponsive.

I showed off the watch on the plane coming home from San Francisco, and tried to open the Yelp app to my seatmates while we were on the runway (yes, my phone was still on). It never fully opened up.

I had a similar experience at the Target store, where I wanted to test the app, which promised to offer directions to products in the store. But the app never responded.

Many apps do eventually open, depending upon your location and how good your wireless or Wi-Fi signal is.

When they do work, I wonder how consumers will like the experience of opening an app, finding information and being told to continue the experience on the iPhone.

That's what many apps do.

Many games ask you to start play on the phone and finish on the watch, news sites like USA TODAY, The Huffington Post and ABC News give you a teaser headline and a sentence of text — and instruct you to read more on the phone.

I found myself saying at every instance — why not just do this all on the phone?

After two days with the Watch, at nearly every instance except for notifications, I end up reaching for the phone, where the experience is easier, smoother and consistent.

I could change my tune and fall in love with the Watch after using it more.

Stay tuned — I'll be back this weekend with another status update.

Readers: How are you faring with the watch? Let's chat about it on Twitter, where I'm @Jeffersongraham and on Facebook.

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