I’ve decided to just get a new battery but it’s looking like 7-10 days turnaround. The watch does everything I need and I can probably get another 3 years out of it. Maybe in that time something revolutionary will appear.
Annoying you have to book a genius bar appointment though - I’d much prefer to just walk into a store and drop it off.
There was a great website called Buyers Guide for Apple that listed the days since last release, the expected new model release date, and a buy/don’t buy recommendation.
Just looked at it, and it appears not to have been updated in the last five years.
Anyone know of another site like that?
Assuming it’s the same as with phones, it’s because the stores don’t stock batteries.
When you request the battery replacement via the web site, they ship your battery to the store. When it arrives, you are informed so you can schedule a date for installation.
If all goes well, they will replace it in a few hours, so be sure to drop it off early in the day (soon after opening, if possible) so you can get it back the same day. Otherwise, it might not be ready until the next day.
Unlike the iPhone, with the watch, Apple doesn’t change the battery. Instead they exchange your old watch for a like-new replacement. The new watch will be completely new (though almost always the same model.)
I had an Apple Watch 6 replaced several years ago due to a stuck pixel. The ‘replacement’ watch was available a week after I turned the old one in. One thing to be careful about is that the replacement watch will probably have an old version of the Watch OS on it, so your setup may not migrate to it. So, before you migrate your settings to it, you should do a clean initialization to force it to load the current Watch OS. Then do a full reset and load your setup, as you would do if you bought a new watch to replace your old one.
Josh Centers started a site https://applebuyingadvice.com/apple-watch-guide/ but it’s also about a year behind, plus it doesn’t tell release dates or expected release dates. That said, you can replace all of his references to the Series 8 with the Series 9 and to the Ultra with the Ultra 2 and the advice is still very good IMO if you are buying a watch right now. (And if you are in the US and buying a watch right now and want anything other than the SE, I’d think about doing it ASAP as there is a patent issue Apple faces for the oxygen sensor which has briefly enforced an import and sales ban of the Series 9 and Ultra 2 and may again if the US District Court rejects Apple’s appeal of the ITC import ban.)
As for expected release dates, Apple is sure to replace the Series 9 this September with the a new watch (Series X, like the iPhone X?), though, again, rumors persist that there will be a change in style this year. The SE was upgraded after two years, so it’s probably due for a small update this September (e.g., perhaps the S9 processor with the improved neural engine, enabling onboard Siri, etc.). And if Apple changes the Series watch in a significant way, I would expect that perhaps the Ultra would see a similar update to have similar band attachments, etc. As usual with Apple, they often can be predictable, but sometimes they throw us a curveball.
MacRumors buyer’s guide shows how long it’s been since a model has been released/updated. Ignore the tags though and watch for other bad data. I.e, they say ‘neutral’ (mid product cycle) for the iphone 15 pro, but ‘buy now’ (just updated) for the 15. Days since release for both say 119.
After 30 minutes to Apple via chat they have confirmed with analytics my battery is bad (78%). Despite this, I still can’t drop it off for repair without a Genius Bar appointment at a store here I’ll have to re-tell the story and they’ll (likely) run the same diagnostics the Chat staff did. Seems a massive waste of time for all concerned.
Just a note that one of the benefits of AppleCare+ (at least here in the US) is that Apple offers express replacement - they ship you a new watch along with a box to ship yours back. They do put a hold on your credit card for the value of the watch until the broken one is returned, and at least here in the US there have been ongoing issues with FedEx “losing” the returned packages so Apple gets either an empty box or never receives the package at all. But it is one of the benefits of AppleCare+.
I do get AC+ when I buy a watch, mostly for this reason, but I never extend it past two the default two years. My thought is that if the watch needs service after AC+ is complete I’ll just upgrade earlier than I would have (I have bought a new watch after three years so far since I’ve owned them.)
Dropped it Apple store this morning. As I’d spent about 30 minutes on Apple Support Chat yesterday it was quite a quick process today (the chat people did all the remote Analytics and the report was attached to my AppleID). They didn’t do anything today other than take my address and credit card. I had already removed it from Find My and reseting the watch took about 30 seconds.
Expected delivery of replacement watch about a week. Interestingly, I wasn’t able to use an Apple Voucher I had to (part) pay for it. Technically I could have, but it would require the 90 minute round trip drive as it has to be done in person. Paying by credit card they ship it directly to my home address.
Something has definitely come to mind since dropping my watch in for battery change the other day.
I’m amazed how much I’m missing it. I resisted an Apple Watch until version 6 but these few days have demonstrated how reliant on it I’ve become. I’ve been for three runs, done yoga three times, swum once and I’ll be climbing tomorrow and Thursday. All of these need to be manually entered into Health or Strava and frankly it sucks. I also kinda miss the sleep tracking.
Anyway, I feel naked 
This is the major reason I always keep my last watch as a spare rather than trading it in (so, I do trade in the second last watch when I buy a new one, usually for next to nothing). I always travel with the spare watch, too.
In fact, if I were in your shoes, I’d probably have already purchased an SE by now.
Or you could buy an actual fitness oriented watch (Garmin/Suunto/Coros/Polar) that does the job better than an AW. The AW is a lousy fitness watch compared to a real one. (On the other hand, a fitness watch makes a lousy smart watch compared to an AW. That’s why I’ve used an AW since the original.)
A few weeks ago I took the dog on a hike and decided that taking my Garmin Epix 2 for that was overkill. People have raved about WorkOutDoors, so since I was wearing my Ultra anyway I decided to try it. The watch was under clothing, so I couldn’t really see it, but when the dog stopped to sniff I looked at it occasionally. Once it had stopped recording for some reason (probably the touch screen got tapped by clothing or something). I really missed auto scroll. But the worst thing was that after I got home and looked at the activity that was automatically uploaded to Strava, there was no heart rate data. I checked Health to see whether the watch was recording HR during that time (it was). So I have no idea what happened there.
Never again. We’ve done a few more hikes since then, and I’ve always put my Scosche optical HR monitor on my arm, put my Epix 2 over my clothing so I could see it, and everything just worked.
The Apple Watch is more than a fitness watch. The notifications is very important. Being able to see who’s calling you before you look at your phone. Checking your calendar. Seeing the temperature.
It’s hard to tell how much you depend upon your Apple Watch until you don’t wear it, and see how many times you look at your naked wrist throughout the day.
I dropped my iPhone off to get the battery replaced. Two hours. Two whole hours without my phone. I went back to my car and suddenly realized I didn’t have directions to where I wanted to go. I couldn’t listen to my podcasts or music. I was going to call my wife about something, and realized I couldn’t.
It was scary.
As for me, I’ve had a couple of Garmin watches before my first Apple Watch. The garmin connect app would often fail to sync, which I never noticed until I went to look at my workout stats and failed to find them (which meant finding the watch, starting workout mode, waiting for the garmin app to sync.) I never had that issue with my old android phones, though.
An SE I think would be about as expensive as a new Garmin anyway.
I’ve got all my history for the last 7 years in Apple Health. I’m not switching to another platform at this point (unless, of course, Apple abandons the watch for some reason. Which won’t happen.)
Yes it is. That’s why I’ve been wearing one since the series 0, and currently wear an Ultra. It’s my daily watch. But it sucks for fitness. The time I described was not the only time I tried using an Apple Watch to track activities, and they’ve all been poor experiences compared to the Garmin watches I’ve owned. Of course, my main activity is cycling, and all watches are lousy for that compared to an actual cycling head unit (I currently use an Edge 1040). Indoors on the trainer I use Zwift on my iPad mini, so no Garmin devices at all. But for cross country skiing (Apple’s Workout is just pathetic) and hiking, I’d much rather use a Garmin Fenix/Epix.
Wife and I are only on our second one…but we are using the 9 during the day and kept the old 5’s for night use to track use and let the 9’s charge overnight. We’ll carry the old ones on travel. We did not track sleep before we got the 9’s since it would require some charge time sometime during the day and that didn’t fit our routines…but with having 2 watches its easy.
Connect sync has gotten a lot better, but it still isn’t perfect. I’ve had to actually manually upload a FIT file once or twice in the past year, but not for months now. It probably has more to do with upgrading to an Edge 1040 (which doesn’t use the dual Bluetooth connections that older Edges did) than anything else. But at least there are alternative ways of getting data into Connect.
Health is not nearly as good as Garmin Connect as a repository of data. I’ve been using Garmin Connect since before it was Garmin Connect. I just checked, and the first activity there is dated January 6, 2008. I looked at the detail, and it has the GPS track, elevation, and speed (no HR for some reason). Skip ahead over many activities to July 8, 2008 and HR is there, so track, speed, elevation, HR. (I don’t remember when I got my Edge 705 and my first HR chest strap, so that may have something to do with it.) I look at my activity from yesterday in Health (Zwift: Sugar Cookie in Watopia recorded on the iPad mini), and nothing but summary details, time, average speed, maximum speed, total elevation ascended. No power data at all. (And if you’re wondering why there’d be a GPS track, speed, elevation, and distance for an indoor ride, Zwift fakes GPS tracks and computes “speed” based on your power output and other data. Yesterday’s ride was on a fictitious island called “Watopia”, and the GPS track is placed in the Solomon Islands. Zwift has several different worlds, some fictitious, some based in reality, some a mix.). So I can’t look at the details of the ride at all. Strava and Garmin Connect do a much better job.
If they didn’t regulate traffic it’s very likely there would be stampedes at worst, and very, very long waiting lines at best. Or maybe one of the geniuses that specializes in iPhones just walked out for a doctor’s appointment, and you are stuck in an especially longer wait until someone qualified returns.
And there are plenty of options available:
As it is, health (and the stock workout app) is good enough for what I do - running, walking, indoor interval stationary bike, elliptical, some strength training, sometimes the treadmill.