As is the case with the Apple Watch line-up, Apple puts a lot of effort to focus on the health and safety features they build in, on their wearables. The watchOS 9 reflects that, with a dedicated FDA approved AFib History system and more thorough options to customize your workouts.
More Watch Faces and Complications
Apple is going to introduce four new watch faces with the update. The Lunar watch face will let you keep track of both the Gregorian and Lunar calendar, which is used in cultures such as Chinese, Islamic and Hebrew.
The second face called Playtime, has been created with artist Joi Fulton. The third, Metropolitan, is a classical looking watch face, which changes style when you rotate the digital crown, and Astronomy, which features a full star map and cloud data.
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Along with the new faces, come modernised complications for older watch faces. Utility, Simple and Activity Analog, and options for background editing on faces like Modular, Modular Compact, and X-Large. The Portraits face has been updated to showcase more depth effect on photos, including cats, dogs and landscapes.
Chinese scripts have been added for the California and Typograph faces. Focus mode will also allow you to change watch faces, depending on which profile you have selected on your iPhone.
More options in the Workout App
The Workout app has been updated to provide even more detailed statistics, and metrics to gauge your performance. The in-session display can now be controlled using the Digital Crown, to move between workout views.
New Heart Rate Zones can be manually created or calculated using existing Health data, and custom workouts allow you to fine-tune a specific workout, according to your liking. There are new alerts as well, like pace, power, hear-rate and cadence. Apple has redesigned the summary page for its Fitness app, to account for all the changes.
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Running and Swimming enhancements
Running has been updated with new form metrics, including stride length, ground contact time and vertical oscillation. These also appear on the Fitness and Health apps, allowing users to see their patterns over time.
Users can now choose to race against their best time, on frequently or recently used routes, and watchOS will update you when you are behind the pace or go off the path.
A new Pacer mode will allow users to dial a distance and goal for the time they want to complete the run in, and the device will provide pace alerts with metrics.
For Swimming, Apple has added kickboard detection for pool workouts, which allows Apple Watch to detect when swimmers are using a kickboard to swim.
There is also a new SWOLF score, which is a stroke count, counted out in seconds, that tells you how long you take to swim one length of the pool. SWOLF counts can be recorded per set.
Sleep insights updated with Sleep stages
The Apple Watch will now be able to detect various sleep stages - REM, Core or Deep Sleep. This data will shared in the Sleep app with detailed information and metrics.
More information has also been added to the metrics, like time asleep, heart rate, respiratory rates and sleep comparison charts in the Health app.
New Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) History
Apple watch can already detect potential signs of AFib, but with watchOS 9, Apple has introduced a AFib history feature that takes into account how often a users heart rhythm shows signs of AFib.
Along with this, you will also get weekly notifications, and detailed history metrics on the Health app, which can be shared privately with your doctor.
Track your doses and medicine requirements with Medications
Medications allows users to manage and schedule their medicational requirements, like medicine, supplements or vitamins. These can be organized in a medications list, that you can then use to schedule for refills.
You can also set-up reminders, and view detailed information on the Health app. Medications will also alert you if it finds a potentially critical interaction between two drugs, which can cause severe side effects.
Other Improvements
Notifications have been redesigned to be less intrusive, and have new slimline borders when displayed.
More quick actions added to Apple Watch, like phone calls, taking photos, playing music, start or stop a workout and pause or play media files.
The QWERTY keyboard now supports French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Mexico, Spain, Latin America).
The dock has been redesigned to make it easier to switch between apps. Both the Reminders and Calendar apps have been updated, and Cardio Recovery metrics have been added.
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