Early adopters who can’t wait to get their hands on Apple’s new timepiece won’t have much longer to hold out. At an event today, company CEO Tim Cook offered the most comprehensive look at the capabilities of the Apple Watch so far, including information about how much it will cost. (Spoiler: it’s not cheap.) Here’s the run-down:
When users swipe up on the Watch face, they get access to the device’s “glances” – short snippets of information like weather data, calendar events and their heart rate. Like other smartwatches, the Apple Watch will also provide them with content from their phone like full text of emails and text messages. For fans of more traditional communication, the watch includes a microphone and speaker so people can make and answer phone calls from their wrist.
The Watch also features a “Digital Touch” feature that lets people send taps to their Apple Watch-wearing friends, along with short drawings. Users can even send their heartbeat to another friend – something Cook said was an “intimate” way of getting in touch.
Like many of its other wearable brethren, the Watch also features fitness capabilities. It will track users’ activity level, and provide them with coaching about how to be more active every week. Apple Watch users will also be able to use the device’s Workouts app to track metrics about their exercise, like calories burned, duration, and heart rate.
The Watch will also allow people who want to leave their phone at home to sync playlists from their music library to the Watch, and then use the Watch to play back music into Bluetooth headphones.
So far, a number of companies have lined up with third-party apps for the Watch. Uber will let people hail a car from their wrist, and Starwood Hotels has provided rich notifications about users’ hotel reservations. Users can manage the apps on their phone using an Apple Watch app.
The Watch is designed to last for 18 hours on a single charge, so users will have to plug it in every night. That’s based on a test with a 38mm watch that included 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use and a half hour of workout tracking with the Apple Watch playing music on Bluetooth headphones. The company said that the larger 42mm watch typically experiences longer battery life.
People who can be more sparing with their Watch use should be able to stretch out the battery for longer periods of time. Early testing by Apple showed that someone checking the time on their Watch five times an hour would be able to get 48 hours of battery life out of it. Of course, that means they aren’t using any of the device’s more interesting capabilities.
Charging the watch takes about an hour and a half to get to 80 percent, and about 2 and half hours to get a full charge.
As for pricing, owning an Apple Watch costs $349 for the 38 mm Apple Watch Sport, which features an anodized aluminum case. The 42mm Apple Watch Sport will cost $399. Users can choose from either a plain aluminum or space gray case for each of those models, along with one of five polymer bands. (The space gray case only comes with a black band.)
The Apple Watch, which features a stainless steel case and the widest selection of bands available for the device, starts at $549 for the 38mm model with a polymer band, and can cost as much as $1049 for a Space Black case and matching Link Bracelet. The 42mm model costs $50 more across the range of available bands, just like with the Apple Watch Sport.
Apple’s online store also shows that people can purchase individual bands separately from the watch, so it’s possible for them to have a polymer band for working out, and a leather band for more fashionable occasions.
People who don’t mind shelling out a ton of money for their timepieces may want to look at the Apple Watch Edition, which features an 18 karat solid gold case, and begins at $10,000 for the 38mm model with a polymer band. The Edition collection tops out at an eye-popping $17,000 for a 38mm Watch with a “Modern” band. There will be a limited number of those watches available, and they’ll only be available from selected retailers.
All of the watches will be available for pre-order on April 10 in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the U.S. That’s also the day when people will be able to visit Apple Stores to try on the Watch for themselves. The watches will launch on April 24 in those countries.
