Baig: I'll buy the Apple Watch
NEW YORK — As one competing smartwatch after another burst onto the scene these past couple of years, I kept searching for strong reasons to snag one.
Despite upticks in the way some nascent watches functioned —- and just as importantly, how they looked — I was never quite tempted enough to buy one.
Now that I've spent more than a week wearing the Apple Watch, I'm reserving a prominent spot on my wrist. Apple Watch is an elegant combination of style and purpose, even if it indeed often serves as an at-a-glance stand-in for the iPhone tucked away in your pocket or purse.
I've been eagerly anticipating the April 24 arrival of Apple's new water-resistant timepiece for what seems like time immemorial; it's only the most-hyped new product since before Apple launched the original iPad. I was one of the select reviewers who got to test it early.
I came at this with several questions: How's battery life? Does the watch do enough on its own? Would an Apple Pay retail transaction go smoothly?
I had already determined Apple Watch — make that watches since there's more than one size and style — was a winner on the fashion side, having seen early versions as far back as September.
Apple has introduced enough lovely band options to satisfy most everyone's idea of taste, assuming your budget allows you to spring for a watch that starts at $349 and leaps all the way to a dizzying $17,000, that for a beautiful 38mm 18-karat yellow gold model with a bright red buckle. (I'd be afraid to wear one in public.)
My review unit is a handsome $699 42mm stainless steel model with a magnetic Milanese loop that ensures a snug fit on my wrist. Its squarish display, visible outdoors, is protected by sapphire crystal.
The watchbands are easily removable and Apple also sent me an optional $49 blue sport band that feels a bit like taffy.
The point is you can easily dress the watch up or dress it down, and the functionality of the watch is the same no matter how much you pay for it.
As with rival smartwatches, you can change and customize watch faces. Apple has some fun ones — butterflies and flowers, the Earth or moon, chronograph, Mickey Mouse. For now, Apple isn't letting third-party developers produce watch faces.
The real eye opener (um, wrist opener) for me would only come after I'd gotten a chance to live with the new watch for a while. A smartwatch isn't an essential purchase like your phone is and that's still so with the Apple Watch. I'm ready to get one anyway.
How you clock in will vary. I used Apple Watch in lieu of a key to open a hotel room door at the W New York Times Square, to pay for items at Whole Foods and McDonald's, and to arrange an Uber ride. I used it to check my heartbeat, peek at stock prices, and send and receive messages.
Despite my inclination to buy, however, the first Apple Watches aren't perfect. Important takeaways:
• You need an iPhone 5 or later. Apple Watch is incompatible with Android or other smartphone platforms. While you don't need to carry the iPhone with you at all times when using the watch — for example, you might go for a run while storing (up to 2GB) music on the watch that you can listen to via Bluetooth headset — you'll need the Apple Watch app on your phone to get started, customize most settings and take advantage of many apps.
• Prepare for a learning curve. The watch wakes up when you raise your wrist and turns off when you lower it, simple enough. You control it through various combination of swipes, taps, presses of the screen (at different pressure sensitivity levels), and manipulating a digital crown on the side, which looks like the crown used to set the time and date on old-fashioned watches. You can also press a side button just below the crown.
It may take you a couple of days to get reasonably comfortable using the watch, especially getting the pressure sensitivity thing down. I sometimes needed to tap more than once or more precisely. Haptic cues (subtle taps on your wrist) help.
Swiping down from the top of the screen reveals notifications from apps (emails and messages, Facebook friend requests, headlines, etc.). Swiping up from the bottom reveals "glances" (Twitter trends, heart rate, world clock).
My natural instinct was to pinch and zoom on the watch face like I do on the phone but you can't. Instead, the digital crown fills in for the gesture.
You can also turn the digital crown to magnify photos, say, or to scroll. Press and hold the crown in to wake up Siri (her voice stays in the background). Alternatively you can summon Siri with the voice command, "Hey Siri."
Pressing the side button instead brings you to a "friends" screen from where you can call the person, send a message, or, if the recipient has his or her own Apple Watch, share a tap, heartbeat or animated sketch that draws on their watch screen in near real time in the same way that you drew it on yours. It's a flirty but borderline gimmicky feature.
• Think seconds not minutes. A smartwatch is not a smartphone. It's about bite-sized moments — the aforementioned glances or notifications for example. You're not meant to browse, read a book, or linger on the watch screen for minutes at a time, much less anything longer.
• Dick Tracy is overrated. Making or answering phone calls from your wrist gets a lot of attention. It's not a great experience though. The speakerphone on the watch isn't very loud. I struggled to hear the other person during watch calls in my car and in Times Square.
Apple has added some nice features when it comes to sending messages. You can dictate a response and either send the text that is recognized or your actual voice recording. You can also reply with canned (in-context) responses.
• Pay by phone. Apple Pay on the watch is even easier to use to buy stuff at retail then on the iPhone. Once you've set up the cards you'll use, double-tap the side button when you're about to pay. You'll see the default credit card you selected (and can swipe to any other cards you'd rather use). Hold the watch next to the terminal, and if all goes as expected the transaction will almost immediately go through, as it did in my tests at McDonald's and Whole Foods.
For extra security, you must enter a passcode before placing the watch on your wrist each day. There's no need to enter a passcode as long as the watch remains on your wrist. You also can set up Apple Watch to automatically unlock when you're wearing it and you unlock your iPhone. You can remove your credit cards from iCloud.com as well.
• Apps. Apple Watch includes versions of some apps that are on your phone, though Apple isn't giving a number of what will be available at launch and the current supply isn't huge. Through Photos app, you can store up to 500 photos, zooming with the digital crown on an individual picture. The screen is small of course, but you can make out the pic.
You can control the camera on your iPhone through a camera remote app on the watch, complete with a live preview on the watch screen. You can even tap to focus.
There's a Maps app, too, with directions, but you're relying on the phone for GPS. You feel taps when it's time to turn, but there was no audible voice instructing you which way to go.
As with other smartwatches, Apple is pumping up the fitness aspects of its timepiece to show you (with a three-ring onscreen design) how many calories you've burned, how much exercise you've gotten and how often you get off your duff.
A separate Workout app goes deeper, with time, distance or calorie goals, tied to specific types of exercise (elliptical, stair stepper, etc.). The watch uses its own sensors and sensors inside your phone. Data can be shared with the Health app on the iPhone.
Some third-party apps are compatible with the watch, including Evernote, Twitter, Flipboard, MLB.com At Bat, Dark Sky and yes, USA TODAY. You can see which apps are available by visiting the App Store from the Apple Watch app on the phone.
• Battery life. Add Apple Watch to the list of devices you best charge nightly. Still, Apple's claim of 18 hours between charges seems accurate based on my pretty heavy daily usage. I only ran out of battery once, on my first full day of testing. I'm guessing the watch might not have been properly aligned the night before with the proprietary magnetic charging cable because I've had plenty of daily juice since.
Of course, battery life is shorter than on a smartwatch like Pebble, which claims at least a week. And you rarely have to consider battery life on an ordinary watch. The Apple Watch battery is not removable by the user; no details yet on a replacement program.
You can tour the Apple Watch yourself beginning this Friday in Apple Stores. As with most first-time products, it isn't flawless or essential. But among smartwatches, Apple Watch is second to none. I want one.
Apple Watch, at a glance
www.apple.com, $349 to $17,000
Pro. Beautiful design options, Apple Pay, versatile feature set.
Con. Expensive. Learning curve. Phone calling from wrist is not a great experience. iPhone only. Must be charged regularly.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter