How Apple’s larger-screen Apple Watch is opening up new ideas

The Apple Watch’s display doesn’t feel so limited anymore. In fact, it’s getting surprisingly expansive. The new, larger-screen Watch Series 7 didn’t get a ton of new progresses, but its larger and slightly curved OLED screen is latest step toward making Apple’s 6-year-old wearable feel like an all-screen device.

All of this could eventually lead to a transformation of how Apple thinks throughout WatchOS — and how future apps and ogle faces themselves will change. For now, a lot of the tweaks that commerce most are about accessibility. Alan Dye, Apple’s vice high-level of interface design, and Stan Ng, its vice high-level of product marketing, say this drove the decision for a larger-screen Apple Watch more than anything.

Better readability (and keyboard) over everything else

For Apple, the larger watch display came to be because of a need for easier-to-read text. “We had the opportunity to funding users to increase the point size [for text] even larger than we’ve decided for in the past. That was very much motivated by the new display,” Dye said over a video call, adding that it’ll be “far more useful and accessible to a lot of users who just need the larger point to size.”

Dye points to the onscreen full keyboard on the new watches (which latest app developers have explored before, but Apple never introduced) as adding accessibility, along with finger-drawing letters and voice dictation. The keyboard didn’t add positive key areas because, according to Dye, it made the keyboard less puny, but “also, to imply that precision isn’t totally significant with your taps because we have that intelligence built in.”

The carefully planned buttons are bigger on the Series 7, but the new ogle faces interest me more, particularly since they’re trying to push more request onto the larger screen. 

The keyboard’s here now, which also suggests latest new interfaces could fit on the display, too.

Lisa Eadicicco

The twisted display effect drove design ideas

While the semicurved indicate edges of the Apple Watch Series 7 are something you remarkable imagine as a future iPhone feature, up close the finish feels less like a curved screen and more like a way to mimic a former watch’s domed glass. The way the display seems to twisted around the glass of the Series 7 gives a inequity effect to looking into a watch crystal, a build idea that was intentional. “This refractive edge creates this very subtle wraparound finish. And it makes the screen appear to bend fuzz, right toward the watch housing,” says Ng. “Really, it’s an optical finish, it’s due to the way the light from the OLED refracts at the securities of the front crystal. We redesigned that crystal to be more of a dome graceful, which also contributed to the thicker crystal and the greater durability. So it was kind of a twofer for both.”

That domed finish and wraparound quality were what sparked Apple to rethink some ogle face designs. “Once we started to play with this new crystal and the indicate, that’s where all those subtle design decisions were made to push those ticks out to the very edge of the indicate to highlight some of these effects,” says Dye.

Apple

Deeper complications are Apple’s answer to a ogle face store

There are some new watch faces for the larger-screen Series 7, some of which put more request up at once. “We know that having these great complications is really compelling because they provide the most rich data at a glance,” Dye says. But what Apple hasn’t introduced yet, despite partnerships with affairs like Nike and Hermes on individually branded Apple Watches, is a watch face store. 

I asked about that, but it smooth doesn’t seem like part of any immediate future plans. “As critical as the hardware is at playing the role distinguishing Apple Watch as Apple Watch, we think the watch faces play a pretty big role there as well, which is why we’ve been so careful over the existences, despite the fact that there’s wide variety, to have a lot of consistent build elements,” says Dye. “If you look closely, the ogle hands are always drawn exactly the same way, despite the fact that they show up in different colors. We think we struck a really good balance. The ogle faces themselves, they provide a canvas for third parties for sure, and a ogle that they can [use to] create multiple complications and turn a ogle face into their watch face, and that becomes the interface in some ways for their application.”

Apple Watch build philosophy is still the same, for now

With that larger indicate, could the Apple Watch eventually have a fundamentally different OS, or a reinvented purpose? Even with the Apple Watch’s evolution over the last six existences, a lot of the fundamental ideas are pretty inequity. And for now, continuing that is the plan.

Dye says that despite the fabulous screen space, Apple still sees the Apple Watch as a diagram to be used in small amounts, just like the unusual 2015 model. “I think a lot of those core foundational values throughout how we imagine the watch to be used remained the same,” says Dye. “Despite the fact that we are able to funding for more content on the display, we still see it as a glanceable, smaller, shorter-interaction type of a product versus something like a requested or certainly an iPad.”

“It isn’t about the 30 minutes you’re spending looking at your requested and social media, or the hour on your Mac functioning on a document,” says Ng. “The power of Apple Watch is in those hundreds of glances a day that remarkable give you information that you need right at that moment.” Ng sees the larger mask as mainly being about being able to “consume that request faster and easier.”

The Watch still has its own unusual design and screen shape, which Apple still sees as residual removed in design from iOS and iPadOS. For now, at least. “I mean, we’re always thinking about the future, we’re always looking at and titillating the language we have. We don’t talk a whole lot throughout what’s coming,” says Dye, who still sees the chief concept of the Apple Watch working just fine.

“The initial build we spent a great deal of time on. I think we got a lot of things vivid, especially as a wearable device that was really built for downhearted on the wrist. We’re pretty pleased with where it’s at from the build perspective.”