Apple has introduced the Apple Watch Ultra 4, which boasts new, advanced health and fitness features, and longer battery life.

Engineered with the new Health Sensing System and S11 chip, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 delivers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable, higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, and a new readiness score to support athletes of all kinds, said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Apple Watch Product Marketing. It also offers extended battery life to track outdoor workouts for up to 45 hours and “the most accurate on-device GPS in a sports watch,” Apple says. 

A redesigned Health app on iPhone arrives later this year, including a new Longevity tab with a Health Age feature showing how metrics are tracking relative to a user’s age. In addition to powering the Health Sensing System, the S11 chip — Apple’s most powerful wearable chip — enables new Audio Intelligence features arriving later this year, to help users remember key moments from their conversations and stay alert to important sounds, built with privacy, security, and accessibility innovations at the core.

With watchOS 27, Apple Intelligence powers Siri AI on Apple Watch, bringing personal context understanding and broad world knowledge to the wrist, Drance says. These features add to the ways the Apple Watch Ultra already supports users with advanced workout tracking across activities, sleep tracking, powerful health features like heart health notifications and the ECG app, and safety capabilities like satellite communications.

Apple says that the Apple Watch Ultra 4 also offers the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch. Charging is now faster than ever; just 15 minutes adds up to 18 hours of additional battery life.

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 also supports Audio Intelligence with these features:

  • Sound Recognition, which comes to Apple Watch to alert users who are deaf or hard of hearing of important sounds, even when their iPhone isn’t with them. This feature listens for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a baby crying, and uses on-device intelligence to notify users when they’re detected.
  • Live Rewind, which can help users recall what was just said in conversation. A double press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet, so users can catch something they may have missed or are less familiar with. Users can ask Siri about the content of the text or save it to the Siri app to revisit later.
  • Siri Recap, which can create high-level summaries of conversations that users can review later to jog their memory. When Siri Recap is turned on, after a conversation, Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title and key points in the new Siri app, allowing users to be more present and engaged in the moment.
  • Shazam, which instantly detects the music playing around the user and automatically displays the song title and artist’s name on the Music Recognition widget in the Smart Stack, easily glanceable on the wrist.

Privacy by Design

Audio Intelligence features are private by design, combining hardware, software, and services to protect user privacy in a way that only Apple can. Apple says these features don’t create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. This is because the S11 chip on Apple Watch Ultra 4 includes Secure Exclave, a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it.

Users are in control and can choose whether to opt in to each Audio Intelligence feature. They can decide exactly where and when Siri Recap takes notes, and can turn Siri Recap on or off at any time, right from Control Center.

By design, Audio Intelligence features don’t identify and attribute speakers, to protect the privacy of both the user and those around them, according to Apple. Siri Recap produces a brief, high-level summary of conversations — not a transcript — and is designed to exclude sensitive information like financial information or government-assigned identifiers. 

Live Rewind plays an audible chime when it is being used, even if Apple Watch is on silent, and shows a full-display animation and microphone indicator so people nearby can hear and see that the feature has been activated. Live Rewind text snippets and Siri Recap summaries are end-to-end encrypted in the Siri app with iCloud syncing, and are not accessible even by Apple. 

Pricing and Availability

  • Customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UAE, the UK, the U.S., and more than 50 other countries and regions can pre-order Apple Watch Ultra 4, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
  • Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at US$799.
  • New Apple Watch bands will be available to order today from apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
  • watchOS 27 will be available for Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch SE 3, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later on Monday, September 14, and requires iPhone 11 or later or iPhone SE (2nd generation or later) with iOS 27. Not all features are available on all devices or in all regions. For more information about availability, visit apple.com.
  • Apple Intelligence will be available with watchOS 27 on Monday, September 14, for users with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device set to a supported language. Apple Intelligence is available with support for these languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages. For feature and language availability and system requirements, see apple.com/apple-intelligence.
  • Siri AI is rolling out with watchOS 27 as a beta on Monday, September 14, for users with a supported device set to English, with support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish coming in October. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages.
  • New subscribers may get three months of Apple Fitness+ and Apple Music with the purchase of Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch SE 3, or Apple Watch Ultra 4. Offer and service availability varies by region. See apple.com/promo for details.

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Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today