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Apple on Wednesday unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 at its iPhone launch event in Cupertino. While the smartwatches aren’t getting a major hardware makeover, they are getting some significant software updates.
Most notably, Apple is taking aim at the growing wave of AI wearables with new “Audio Intelligence” features that let you rewind moments and remember details from daily conversations.
The smartwatches are launching with “Live Rewind,” a feature Apple describes as letting you go back up to 15 seconds. A double press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet. You can ask Siri about the content of that transcript, or save it to the new Siri app to revisit later.
There’s a “Siri Recap” feature that’s designed to help you remember key moments from daily conversations. It uses ambient listening to take high-level notes of your conversations, like takeaways from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference. When Siri Recap is turned on, after a conversation, Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title and key points in the new Siri app.
A new “Sound Recognition” feature will be able to listen for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, a baby crying, and more for people who are hard of hearing.
Apple says these audio intelligence features do not create or store audio recordings.
Both of the new smartwatches feature a new health-sensing system with an increased electrode surface area for better skin contact during ECG readings. For improved optical sensing, redesigned photodiodes are arranged in a ring to capture light more efficiently. There are also more power-efficient green LEDs that enable accurate heart-rate measurements throughout the day, even during motion.
The new health sensing system delivers higher-frequency continuous heart rate data, which is a key indicator of your overall health. Background heart rate readings are now taken every five seconds all day long, even while you’re on the go. That’s 60 times more frequent than before.
The smartwatches are taking a page from smart rings with new readiness scores that analyze your recent activity, vitals, and sleep each morning, distilling it all into a single score that indicates how prepared your body is to take on the day.
There’s also a new “Health Age” feature that lets users see how their key health metrics compare with their actual age, based on data from their watch, including VO2 max, sleep, and more.
The Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399, while the Apple Watch Ultra 4 costs $499.
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