After several years of minor updates, a new report claims that the Apple Watch is heading for one of its most significant updates this fall.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman predicts that the Apple Watch Series 10 (or X depending on what Apple wants to brand it as), which is set to launch in fall 2024, will see a series of “notable changes” as the company celebrates the device’s anniversary. These will include larger displays, thinner bezels, and a new processor chip designed to work better with AI when Apple is ready to bring Apple Intelligence to the wrist.
“Both versions of the Series 10, codenamed N217 and N218, will feature larger displays,” Gurman writes. “With this change, Series 10 buyers will be able to choose a display that’s about as big as the Apple Watch Ultra.”
But unlike the Apple Watch Ultra, the Series 10 won’t be bulkier to accommodate the larger displays. In fact, it’ll be thinner than the previous generation (though it’ll likely still take up more real estate on the wrist). The design, Gurman says, “shouldn’t be much different” in other ways, so we can expect the same curved screen corners, bezel width, button layout, and so on, but the larger screen and thinner chassis alone represent a major upgrade.
The curved display and thinner chassis aren’t the only changes; there’s also a new processor. The Series 10 and accompanying Ultra 3 are both expected to feature a chip “that could lay the foundation for some AI improvements in the future,” Gurman writes. For now, the Apple Watch is the only major Apple product left out of the Apple Intelligence project (and isn’t that a shame?), but when the time comes, that processor will give the device the hardware capabilities needed to handle AI tasks.
Apple introduced a quad-core Neural Engine for the Apple Watch with the S9 chip in the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which allows the watch to “process machine learning tasks up to two times faster, compared to Apple Watch Series 8.”
The hoped-for health improvements, meanwhile, seem likely to be pushed back to a later model. Gurman says efforts to develop monitors that can detect high blood pressure and sleep apnea haven’t been smooth sailing, with Apple running into “serious issues.” But those improvements are still in the works, and Apple is committed to implementing them.
It’s worth noting that these theories aren’t entirely new. The weekly nature of the newsletter means that Gurman often summarizes and expands on existing rumors rather than breaking new ground. The ultra-large display and thin chassis, for example, were revealed in a leak last month. The idea that the Series 10 will get an AI-enabled processor is new, I believe, but the author himself acknowledges that it’s not a given: note the word “could.”
But there’s not much time left to wait. For all the latest news and rumors ahead of this fall’s launches, check out our regularly updated Apple Watch 2024 superguide.
