Apple Watch Design and Features
Apple Watch Design
The Apple Watch comes in three varieties, the entry-level Apple Watch Sport, mid-range Apple Watch and high-end Apple Watch Edition.
The overall design of the smartwatches is the same. Each Apple Watch has a rectangular face with rounded-off corners housed in a case that’s visible from the front and sides. There are two buttons to control the watch – a “digital crown”, which looks much like the crown on a normal watch, and is used to scroll through apps, and a lozenge-shaped one beneath that. All are also available in two screen sizes, 38mm or 42mm.
Beyond that, each version comes with various levels of customisation, from different band colours, designs and materials, to different screen sizes, to different casing colours and materials.
Apple Watch Sport
Apple Watch Sport is the entry level Apple Watch and, as you would expect, it’s less customisable. There are only five strap colours currently available on the online Apple Store – black, white, pink, green and blue, all made from fluoroelastomer. However, four new colours – pale pink, dark blue, yellow and red – made an appearance at an event in Milan, although there’s no indication if these were special editions or will eventually be widely available.
The Apple Watch Sport’s casing is only available in silver aluminium, with the exception of the black band, which comes only with a space grey casing.
Another apparent difference is the charger that comes with the Apple Watch Sport. According to 9to5mac, unlike the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition, or what’s seen in the promotional videos and pictures, Apple Watch Sport doesn’t have a fancy metal charger. Instead, it comes with a fully white plastic charger, which was seen ever so briefly in the company’s “Better Starts Here” environmental corporate social responsibility video, although its presence wasn’t explained.
While the charger functions exactly the same as the metal one, using inductive Qi technology, it also emphasises the fact that if you went for the Apple Watch Sport, you took the cheap option.
Apple Watch
The mid-range Apple Watch has the greatest level of customisation. There are ten different designs available, which is mainly thanks to a wider range of strap options. There are two fluoroelastomer Sport straps available in either black or white, one Classic Buckle, which is available only in black, a woven metal Milanese Loop, available in silver only.
There are also eight leather straps available, three Leather Loops in black, blue, stone or light brown, which are only available for the 42mm screen version, and four Modern Buckle in brown, pink, blue and black, which are available only for the 38mm version
Finally, there are two stainless steel Link Bracelets, available in silver or black, with the black version having a black case only.
Apple Watch Edition
When you check out the specs on the Apple Watch Edition, you start to see why it costs so much more than the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Sport.
The defining feature of the edition is its casing, which is available exclusively in 18-carat yellow or rose gold.
All in all there are six designs available, a white Sport band with rose gold casing, black Sport band with yellow casing, two leather Classic Buckle with yellow casing in blue or black for the 42mm version only, a pink Modern Buckle with rose gold casing for the 32mm version only, and a red Modern buckle with yellow casing, also for the 32mm version only.
To boost its high-end credentials, Apple has been handing out all gold Apple Watch Editions to the likes of Haut Couturier Karl Lagerfeld and singer Beyonce, as well as enlisting super model Christy Turlington to promote both the Edition and Sport ranges in a series of videos.
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