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I like my Apple Watch. Admittedly, I’m a reasonably mild person: I take advantage of it to trace my steps, set timers whereas I prepare dinner, management my music playback, and pay for issues. To be sincere, I merely can’t think about going again to a bodily card and even my iPhone for that final one—Apple Watch is my default fee system every time I’m out and about.
However there’s a skinny line between love and hate—and for me, it will get crossed every time the humidity rises to a degree the place the sky can’t include it anymore. That’s when the Apple Watch goes from being one of the helpful units Apple has ever made to being one of the irritating items of expertise I’ve ever owned.
It’s not that the rain harms the Apple Watch in any method. I really feel no want to guard it. Certainly, the Apple Watch SE and Sequence 9 are water resistant as much as 164 ft (50 meters), and the Extremely is water resistant as much as 328 ft (100 meters). I bathe with mine on on a regular basis.
The issue is that when it rains, my Apple Watch takes on a thoughts of its personal. And it’s the thoughts of just a little mischievous gremlin. As soon as I used to be out, and I obtained a textual content from a good friend. She wished to know if I used to be drunk. It was 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I used to be on the way in which to a physician’s appointment, so, no, I wasn’t drunk. However I used to be moist, or a minimum of the cuff of my jacket was, as a result of a light-weight bathe had been falling after I left my home.
Scrolling up by way of the message thread, I shortly understood why my good friend thought I used to be inebriated. She had obtained quite a few textual content messages from me that I’d by no means despatched. Some had been pure autocomplete gibberish, and others had been merely emoji after emoji, with even a number of dreaded Memoji thrown in. However I didn’t ship any of those. My Apple Watch did.
The difficulty is the Apple Watch’s capacitive contact display screen. Like all capacitive contact display screen, it reacts when {an electrical} cost is available in contact with it, just like the form of electrical cost the pores and skin in your fingertip provides off. However when a bit of clothes is damp—such because the cuff of a coat that was within the rain—it, too, transfers {an electrical} cost to the contact display screen. In my case, my damp cuff stored brushing towards my Apple Watch’s display screen, and it managed to activate the Messages app, choose an current thread (the one with my good friend), and convey up the tiny onscreen keyboard.
And this stream of phantom texting isn’t the one annoying factor my Apple Watch has carried out when it rains. As soon as, it set no fewer than a dozen alarms, every randomly going off at completely different instances. One other time, it began a exercise, a timer, and added a brand new merchandise to my to-do listing. And naturally, when it rains, and the Now Enjoying window is on the display screen, my Apple Watch has a area day enjoying DJ, skipping previous songs I need to take heed to.
The Apple Watch does have a Water Lock function, however as Apple points out, it needs to be used “to keep away from unintended faucets on the show if you put on your Apple Watch in water,” equivalent to if you end up swimming. It’s not meant for use when it’s raining as a result of it blocks your skill to interact with the Apple Watch’s show.
What I’ve now began doing every time my cuffs are damp from the rain (sure, even after I use an umbrella, my cuffs at all times appear to get moist): I roll up the jacket sleeve on the arm sporting my Apple Watch. I hate doing this as a result of it seems like I’m attempting to start out some goofy trend development. However what else is there to do?
Nicely, Apple could possibly tackle this problem, with machine studying—sure, AI. The software program on this yr’s upcoming watchOS 10 may very well be higher skilled to detect the origin of {that electrical} cost that’s urgent on the show. Is it from the finger with the identical floor space that often presses on the display screen? Or does {the electrical} cost cowl a wider space, like one thing damp grazed the display screen? If it’s the latter, the Apple Watch may study to disregard the enter. In actual fact, Chinese language Apple competitor, OnePlus, has developed a sophisticated algorithm that powers a function on a few of its telephones known as “Rain Water Touch,” which makes them good sufficient to know which faucets ought to and shouldn’t be ignored when the cellphone’s show is moist.
With the tenth anniversary of the Apple Watch arising this yr, I hope the corporate lastly addresses this decade-long annoyance and offers the Apple Watch one thing it’s at all times been lacking: my continuous love for it, even when it rains.
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