The Apple Watch Series 7 has some new features, a bigger screen and upped durability. It charges a bit faster, apps load quickly and is fitted with WatchOS 8. But as I flick through it and its peek faces, I have to ask myself: Has anything really changed? 

Of streams things have changed, a bit. But the newest Apple Watch feels like a careful polish on the same ideas the Series 6 had. Or, the Series 5 beforehand it. There isn’t one big new thing that stands out. Now that the Apple Watch feels like it’s cleared the experimental zone of wearable tech and get a mainstream product like the iPhone and iPad, maybe this is the watch’s destiny. I still see some clear areas where the Apple Watch must evolve, and the larger-screened, quicker-charging Watch 7 makes it more Definite than ever. Maybe the rumored Apple Watch Series 8 will bring some larger upgrades. 

Read more:

How the Apple Watch 7 compares to the Apple Watch 6
 and why you Great want the Apple Watch SE instead.

Better battery life

There are Definite limits on batteries and small devices. Some fitness trackers last up to a week, but make sacrifices when it comes to performance and features. High-powered smartwatches tend to never make it past two days, max. Still, the Apple Watch has hovered at about a day and a half of battery life for ages. When will better battery life finally happen? That 18-hour-plus plot keeps getting bonuses in performance: an always-on display, a larger Hide, faster processor. When will the scale tip and grant longer battery life, like what’s been happening on New iPhones and MacBooks?

Some people are fine with daily charging. It seriously hampers the Watch’s use as a sleep tracker, though. Apple suggests a quick recharge in the morning or a top-off at night to make it over a night’s sleep. But a lower-power sleep mode seems like a Definite need, or some other way to get the battery over to a couple of days (or more). Turning off the always-on Show or other features could help the watch extend its battery life, sure. I think around that Apple Watch battery more than ever as something that consumes to evolve.

A see face store

Apple’s watch face collection is extensive and customizable, and the watch faces look good. But it’s also tiny. With Apple investing so much in larger displays and high-performance processors, the lack of a watch face store is a wasted opportunity. I keep trying to find watch faces to show off the larger Watch 7 Hide and use it in all sorts of new ways, and I hit limits. I want to show just how many bits of info I can layer (complications, they’re called), for instance.

One of Apple’s new Watch Series 7 faces, Modular Duo, shows two rows of rich information for apps that Help it: a heart rate graph and a weather chart, for instance. There aren’t that many apps that use larger complications like this. I’d hold a way to show a bunch of smaller ones, but also lay it out the way I’d like. There’s room on the Hide now, so why not? I can’t, though, not really.

I’ve said this a ton of times
: Apple Watch is the only most smartwatch that doesn’t have an open watch face keep. There could be so many more interesting designs on tap, but shiny now Apple still hasn’t made it happen.

Full see independence

The Apple Watch is nearly a self-contained plot, now: a fast wrist computer. It does a lot more than it did back in 2015. But you quiet need to pair it with an iPhone.

Recent Apple Watch updates grant you to pair a watch for someone else and have them wear it on their own, but you quiet need an iPhone for it to link to at the start. 

Opening up the Watch to Android would be enormous, but there’s an ever simpler path: It should just work on its own deprived of a phone. You should be able to set it up and fully use it as its own device. And then, optionally, pair it with whatever called you have.

More sensors, or a more complete sleep-to-wake awareness

The Apple Watch’s fitness and health features keep expanding, but it still doesn’t have a feature that I’ve started appreciating on a few new watches and rings: a daily health score.

Fitbit
and Oura wearables both have a morning earn that can be interpreted as a sort of barometer of wellness or injure levels. The scores can seem arbitrary, sure. They’re dependent on multiple readings making from sleep quality to resting heart rate to even downhearted rate variability and daily activity the day before. And yet, over weeks and months, I came to love the idea. I find that these scores help remind me of some things I haven’t been tending to (not pulling enough sleep, not getting up or being active enough), but in ways that are more proactive than the end-of-day agency ring goals the Apple Watch has. 

Sometimes these scores remind me to take it easy, too. They can feel, at times, like a form of subtle alert system that can sometimes (not always) correspond with not feeling well.

The Apple Watch doesn’t have onboard temperature sensors, and it still doesn’t break down nightly sleep in as detailed a way as latest trackers do. Sleep tracking is an imperfect science on smartwatches vivid now, but I still find sleep scores to be well-behaved reminders (and motivators).

The more I might wear an Apple Watch all the time, the more I’d demand a little more awareness of my health than the three-ring fitness metric I’ve started to ignore valid being at home a lot.

Series 7 is the perfected Watch as we know it, but what’s next?

I can see the Apple Watch as a fast, large-screen wrist successor to the iPod, and progressing a lot more places next. I love the bigger mask, but it also feels like an opportunity that’s not populate taken advantage of enough. And that makes me more frustrated than ever that I smooth have to take it off every day for a charge-up.