Unlike Apple’s new iPhones, the Apple Watch Series 9 wasn’t the subject of numerous leaks. Still, Apple’s announcement had few surprises.
The new smartwatch boasts an updated S9 chip with improved performance and battery life. Apple focused on the S9 chip to start, highlighting that it has 60 percent more transistors than S8 and sports a 30 percent faster GPU. The S9 also includes a four-core neural engine for two times faster machine learning, all while maintaining the Apple Watch’s 18-hour battery life.
The neural core also enables on-device Siri processing. On-device processing will boost Siri’s performance and also enable ‘Siri + Health’ so you can query Siri for details on your health metrics. Apple said this will be available later this year, starting in English and Mandarin. On-device processing also improves the accuracy of on-wrist dictation.
The Watch Series 9 display is also getting a boost, offering up to 2,000 nits of brightness. It can also dim down to 1 nit.
One of the more interesting improvements coming to the Apple Watch is a gesture reminiscent of what Apple showed off with the Vision Pro headset earlier this year. Called ‘Double Tap,’ users can tap the index finger and thumb on their watch hand together twice to activate the primary button in an app. For example, Double Tap can answer or end calls, stop a timer, and more.
The Apple Watch Series 9 will come in a new pink colour and will be available starting September 22nd. The Apple Watch Series 9 starts at $549.
All of our Apple fall hardware event content can be found here.
Header image credit: Apple
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
