2 Apple Watch features that earned the smartwatch a permanent place on my wrist

I have not always been a fan of the Apple Watch. I bought one as soon as it went on sale in 2015 hoping it would blow my mind, but it ended up spending more time in my drawer than on my wrist. It took me three more years and the addition of two key features, LTE and the ECG app, to finally start using it regularly. And now it has earned a permanent place on my wrist.

The ‘iWatch’ has arrived

I started covering the Apple Watch for CNET in Spanish months before it officially existed. In the summer of 2014, he was hosting a weekly Apple rumor, and there was already talk of Apple announcing an “iWatch” in the fall.

Sure enough, after unveiling the iPhone 6 at the September 9, 2014 event, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced one more thing: the Apple Watch. It was by no means the first of its kind: Samsung, Motorola and Sony, to name a few, had already released smartwatches at this point, but Apple has not always been concerned with having the first of any product. Still, it was an entirely new category for Apple, and the first of the post-Steve Jobs era (Jobs died nearly three years earlier).

After the presentation, I had the opportunity to see him up close in the demo room. It was certainly intriguing: I remember thinking it was one of the most beautiful watches I had ever seen. But the bar had been set low enough. Most of the previous smartwatches I had tried were more bulky and definitely geared more towards men than women. The fact that the Apple Watch had two size options (38mm and 42mm) meant that it considered at least more than one gender. But that initial encounter was brief: Another eight months passed before he could test it in the real world.

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Try the original Apple Watch

The aluminum model with the bright green sports band that he had ordered in advance arrived on April 24, the same day it went on sale. In hindsight, I probably should have opted for a softer shade, but I got carried away by the variety of color options.

One of the things that I liked from the beginning was the ability to check notifications from my wrist. I still like that. I don’t even care how silly I look talking on my wrist, Dick Tracy style, when I dictate one more answer. There are also more ways to respond to notifications than ever before, including scribbling.

I liked having Apple Pay on my wrist. The first time I used it on a Jamba Juice in the city, the employee looked at me as if he had just performed a magic trick. Back then, there were only a handful of merchants accepting Apple Pay, so you really had to search for them.

But my favorite feature, and the one I use the most to this day, was Find my iPhone. It is up to telling the time. The ability to ping my phone has saved me countless hours of searching over the years.

But I also had a lot of complaints about that original Apple Watch. The apps were slow to load and had few features compared to their iPhone counterparts. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter took forever to load and most of the time I ended up pulling out my phone instead of waiting for it to appear on the watch. Also, instant stalking on a small screen was not as satisfying. Now those apps don’t even exist.

Fitness monitoring was also missing. The watch didn’t have a built-in GPS or elevation tracking, so I still had to run my phone to map my route in the first place, thwarting the purpose of having an exercise watch. The only way to access your summary stats on the clock screen was right after your workout ended. Once it disappeared, you would have to search the iPhone app to find its statistics.

And I could barely get through the day without having to charge the battery.

After a week of using it, I still couldn’t figure out why I needed an Apple Watch. So instead of posting a regular review video, I decided to let people answer that question for themselves by showing them what it was like to live with the Apple Watch. Once I finished shooting the video and the buzz of the release subsided, I’d use my Watch sporadically to test the occasional software update, but would eventually go back to the drawer.

Apple Watch is released

Three years later, with the addition of LTE in Series 3, my perception of the Apple Watch began to change. I started to see the Apple Watch as something separate from the iPhone. Adding your own cell signal freed up the watch and in turn freed me from having to charge my phone all the time. Sure, I had a huge recall from the phone the first few times I left it, but I liked the feeling of not having it around to distract me.

Finally, I started turning off my phone when I was coming home from work to spend more quality time with my baby. You could still log your sleep schedule on the Glow app, reply to a text message, or check the headlines during those late-night meals, but you wouldn’t be spending endless hours touring Instagram at 3 a.m. like a zombie.

He also became my regular racing partner. Before trying the Series 3, I’d used the Apple Watch off as an exercise tracker, but preferred to run just for pleasure, not to fill a quota on a tracker. I didn’t even listen to music in my careers. I just ran on my phone just in case for security. But wearing my phone was cumbersome, I’d end up in my sports bra or the back pocket of my running pants, even if they had one. Having LTE on the watch meant that I could finally put my phone down and stay connected. Finally, I also started to trust him for training.

I had two babies in two years and suddenly I didn’t have the time or the energy to go on those long journeys anymore. I struggled to maintain the same level of activity that I had in my past life, and the ring system on the Apple Watch helped me be honest about how much or how little I was doing. I became that person that I used to make fun of and who is obsessed with closing their rings at the end of each day. Now I’ve even started using my fitness data to help me get back to my old running pace. At six months postpartum I still have a way to go, but I have better ways to track my progress in the Activity app. The watch now measures your cardiovascular fitness (VO2 Max) and your running pace over a longer period of time.

From fitness tracker to health tool

The second game that changed the characteristics of Apple Watch was the ECG application (or EKG, sometimes called EKG) and heart rate notifications, which were released alongside Series 4. With the upgrade to WatchOS 5, Apple Watch (Series 1 or later) gained the ability to alert the user if their rate heart rate drops below, or peaks above, a certain threshold, or if your heart rate is indicative of atrial fibrillation (a dangerous heart condition). People with Series 4 users can also use the ECG app to send an EKG to their doctor.

And that’s when things became real. I was testing the ECG application along with a hospital grade ECG for a CNET story when the doctor noticed something strange about my heart rate that appeared on both the watch and his machine. It didn’t turn out to be serious: just stress and lack of sleep made my heart skip a beat, but it scared me. As a healthy, active 32-year-old, I didn’t think I had to worry about heart problems.

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That Christmas, I gave my parents an Apple Watch. They live in El Salvador, so I can’t physically be there to monitor their health, but Apple Watch gave me a way to at least monitor their heart’s health from afar. The fall detection feature that calls emergency services if you have a severe fall (on Series 4 and Series 5) is also a good safety blanket for older parents.

What the 5 years of Apple Watch look like

There’s still a lot that Apple Watch can improve on: battery life is at the top of my list, a design update, continuing to add health features like sleep tracking and blood pressure. But it is done having to be tested in my book. Five years later, I finally understand what the Apple Watch is for, and it’s different for everyone. For me, being connected without the added distractions and motivating myself to stay healthy despite the challenges of being a new mother. Greetings to the next five years.