Thread: Apple Watch
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Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2014-09-10, 03:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wrao View Post
I wonder also if a future edition will move away from being tied to the phone for connectivity. Perhaps through new wireless tech or whatever.
It might, I suppose. The iPod touch (and iPhone? I didn’t have one until the 5) initially required a PC or Mac with iTunes to set it up. Later, it was set free.

The obvious problem with the Watch is that it is tiny and therefore has extremely limited battery capacity. It offloads a lot of energy-sucking operations to the iPhone (GPS, cellular radio, perhaps CPU-heavy activities in thin-client style).

I can envisage ARM CPUs getting better and better and eventually drawing so little power that the Watch could do anything it needs to under its own power.

But GPS receivers have been around for several decades and they still suck a lot of power. Any progress here will be slower. I have a Garmin Edge 800 for my bicycle that does nothing but run a GPS and a map, and it’s huge but only lasts something like 10 hours (with the backlight off).

And cellular radios have much greater limitations. The emitted signal isn’t wasted power that can be reduced – it’s needed for the tower to pick it up. There will be progress, but it will require new standards, industry-wide adoption, etc., i.e. it will take many years.

… engrossed in such factional acts as dreaming different dreams.
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