AAPL Apple Inc

By David Pierce 

It has never been exactly clear why the Apple Watch exists. It does a lot of things, certainly: delivers notifications, tracks fitness, makes phone calls, helps you pay for stuff and lots more besides. Your phone does all of those same things just fine, though, so why spend hundreds more on yet another gadget you need to charge all the time?

With the new $399-and-up Apple Watch Series 4, which the company announced on Wednesday at an event at its monolithic new compound in Cupertino, Calif., Apple offers the most compelling thing yet for the Watch to do that the iPhone can't: help you monitor and track your health in deep, medically useful ways.

Apple also improved the design and performance, which might make previous Apple Watch owners consider an upgrade. However, if you don't have particular health-care needs, and you weren't already a Watch person, the Series 4 might not be different enough to hook you.

Vital stats

Since you are wearing the Watch on your wrist, where its sensors touch your skin all day, it is able to collect a remarkable amount of information about your vitals. The new model will be able to take an electrocardiogram, known to most as an ECG, which measures the electrical activity in your heart and can be used to identify atrial fibrillation, a common heart condition. It is a relatively simple exam, but typically one you would need to go to the doctor for. With the newly Food and Drug Administration-approved watch app, you can get a reading in about 30 seconds, and share the results later. I was able to demo it, and it worked. The ECG app won't be released until later this fall.

Even if you are not taking an ECG, the new Watch periodically monitors your heart rate and will alert you if it is worryingly high or low, or if it detects an irregular rhythm (another feature due later this fall).

The Series 4 Watch can even detect when you have fallen down, which sounds potentially priceless in an "I've fallen and I can't get up" emergency (but also ripe for dangerous pranks).

Apple executives at the event said they are only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible with this medical information. Because the Apple Watch is a device people actually want to wear, not some giant medical doohickey strapped to your upper arm, people are likely to wear it more and get more out of its monitoring and examinations.

Design elements

Even if you don't care about the health features of the Series 4, there is a lot that is new -- most noticeably, the larger screen. There is also a new processor that Apple says makes the Watch up to twice as fast as its predecessor. Using it felt faster and smoother than ever.

Rather than coming in 38 mm and 42 mm case sizes, it is now 40 mm and 44 mm. Millimeters matter on your wrist, and the taller case felt noticeably larger when I put it on, but because the new one is thinner than previous models, it also felt a bit more comfortable. I suspect it will still catch on my shirt sleeve, though.

Apple filled the larger screen with more stuff than you have ever seen on an Apple Watch. You can add as many as eight "complications" to some faces, giving you loads of information every time you glance at your device. If you want to see a timer, the weather, the time in Tokyo, the moon cycle, your calendar and your activity stats every time you raise your wrist, you will love all the room to do so. I found it too busy in my demo. Luckily there are lots of other new faces, many of them not quite so intense. One, which depicts a sloshing pool of liquid metal underneath the ticking hands, was particularly mesmerizing to watch.

The complications are part of Apple's broader effort to make everything on the Watch happen in fewer steps. Tapping through menus is miserable on the tiny device, but using Siri to launch apps or do simple tasks works fairly well. It is easier on the new model to take action on a notification, rather than opening an app. This Watch seems to be for looking at, more than tapping on, which feels right.

Better bits

If you have an older Watch -- anything but the original -- you can update to WatchOS 5 on Sept. 17 and get many of those software improvements.

It also has features like Walkie-Talkie, which you can use for quick chats without needing to make a phone call, and new workout settings for yoga and hiking. You can have the Watch track your running pace and alert you if you are going too fast or slow, or set up weeklong competitions with other Watch users to see who exercises the most. And if you get more amped up by Terry Gross than Kanye West, you can listen to podcasts directly from the Watch.

I am most interested in the Watch's new ability to automatically trigger workout tracking. I wasn't able to do a spontaneous vinyasa in my briefing, unfortunately, so I will have to test that later.

We will need to test the Apple Watch Series 4 more to see if it really matters that the new model has a louder speaker, or if all that new functionality really doesn't hurt battery life. (Apple says the battery life for the Series 4 is the same, but that it lasts longer during workouts.)

I still would rather the Watch had an always-on screen that would show the time without me having to dramatically raise my wrist. I would rather have more apps that work natively on the Watch, too, instead of requiring your phone. And we will have to test and see if any of Apple's cellular-connection problems remain.

Even now, the Watch's purpose feels a bit convoluted. It is for talking with your friends...and tracking your ticker? It is for paying at Starbucks...and training for a marathon? Apple's idea is that by making one device that does everything, it can do more because you will use it more. I'm still confused by it all. But it sure looks like the best yet version of...whatever it is.

Write to David Pierce at david.pierce@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 13, 2018 15:26 ET (19:26 GMT)

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