Apple Watch 3 LTE Review: So Good It Made Me Use An iPhone Again

Ben Sin

Perhaps the highest compliment I can give the Apple Watch Series 3 is that it made me use the iPhone X as my main phone again.

It’s not that I hate the iPhone X; I actually love its hardware and swiping gestures. But as I’ve written/tweeted/ranted on video/told friends hundreds of times before, I prefer Android to iOS (I like my homescreen customizable and all my notifications grouped properly on a single pane, just to give you two examples why). And since I have all the top phones, I can be picky, and for the most part, my main SIM card calls the Huawei Mate 10 Pro home.

But after testing Apple’s newest Apple Watch (the LTE edition just got released in Hong Kong this week) for a few days, I am enjoying the experience so much I swapped back to the iPhone X as my daily driver, mainly because Apple’s smartwatch (obviously) works better when paired with iOS than Android.

I must admit I’m a relatively novice when it comes to using smartwatches. I never got to test the first two editions of the Apple Watch, and my only smartwatch experiences thus far has been the Fitbit Ionic and the Fossil Q Marshall.

But almost within the first minute of unboxing the Apple Watch 3, I understood why tech reviewers have appointed it the king of the market. Even though I knew the Fitbit Ionic was a bit bulky during my review period, I didn’t quite know just how much so. Next to the Apple Watch, the Ionic’s blocky square face with sharp corners look awkward and uncomfortable. The Fossil Q Marshall’s 250g weight, meanwhile, feel absurd next to the Watch’s barely 60g.

The fit and finish of the Apple Watch is top notch all around. The OLED panel gets up to around 1,000 nits of brightness, which made outdoor reading under the sun not an issue.

Like previous editions, the Watch has a crown and single button on the right side that, along with an intuitive series of taps and swipes, navigate the software smoothly. While I find the widespread belief that Apple’s smartphone are built better than everyone else’s completely unjustified, I must say that is probably true for the watch.

Another aspect of the Apple Watch that blew me away was the fluidity of animations and touchscreen sensitivity. On Fitbit devices, it’s always been choppy animations and less than stellar response times … which I was fine with! I don’t have nearly as much demands for a wrist-worn digital device than I do a smartphone, but I guess I should, because Apple’s got it right.

It’s ultimately the software of the Apple Watch that won me over. I really like the myriad of apps on Apple’s watch ecosystem, including a mostly functional Instagram feed. Being able to receive and interact with notifications has also proven to be huge. On the Fitbit Ionic, I could see notifications but couldn’t do anything with them. On the Apple Watch, I can respond to incoming WhatsApp or WeChat messages by voice dictation (which works very well) or scribbling on the watch’s face.

I used to be one of those who didn’t think smartwatch notifications would bring much benefit, considering we could just check our phones for the same information. But in my week of using the Apple Watch, I realized there are some scenarios in which not having to reach for your phone is ideal. The first is in the morning, during that stretch when I’m awake but haven’t gotten out of bed yet. Before the Apple Watch, I’d hear the phone buzz with a message or phone call on the night stand and have to lean over to get a peak to see if the incoming message is worth my time. Now, I could just glance at my watch and decide whether to take that call or reject it; to respond to the message now or wait until I’ve begun my day.

Ben Sin

This LTE version device takes the connectivity thing even further than previous Apple Watches. Those had to be synced to the phone via bluetooth. This new one is capable of working completely untethered because it’s got an eSIM embedded inside. I recently wrote about a Hong Kong company that’s doing some cool things with eSIMs here, but for those unfamiliar, eSIMS are basically embedded chips that some in the industry believe could one day replace physical SIM cards. The benefits to using eSIMs is that they take up far less space and they can be programmed by carriers over-the-air, so you don’t have to swap SIM cards in and out when you travel.

To take advantage of the eSIM inside the Apple Watch you’ll have to register the device with your local carrier. In the U.S. and some parts of Europe, carriers are charging customers additional fees for the connectivity. Fortunately for me, in Hong Kong, the carrier CSL is offering the service free of charge. So with a CSL account, I was able to pair my number to the Apple Watch 3 in under a minute, and after that, my watch was able to receive phone calls and notifications even completely separated from my phone.

Phone calls with the Apple Watch sound excellent. Despite its petite size, the Watch packs a very loud speaker, and the party on the other end said she could hear me clearly too.

The Apple Watch does fitness tracking too, but this is one area where it falls short to Fitbit. Whereas tracking step counts and heart rate has become mostly the norm these days (there are no shortage of bands and even phones that can do that), Fitbit devices offer sleep tracking, which Apple’s device does not, at least not natively. There are some third party apps that can somewhat track sleeping habits and hours, but they’re nowhere near as smart as Fitbit’s version.

Ben Sin

Ben Sin

Ben Sin

Otherwise, the watch tracks exercises pretty intelligently. It could tell the difference between cycling (a workout) vs. riding on an electric scooter (not a workout); walking up stairs vs. riding up escalators.

Battery life here on the Watch depends on how often you need to use cellular reception. In a relatively small city like Hong Kong, my Watch probably doesn’t need to swap between cell towers as often as someone living in, say, Texas would. So I’m not sure how my battery experience holds up to readers living elsewhere. But so far, my experience sees the Watch giving me about two days of power through one charge.

The Apple Watch, as mentioned earlier, is best used with an iPhone. You can indeed pair it with an Android device, but you won’t get to customize the Watch’s clock face or settings on an Android device and you will only get the most basic of push notifications.

So ultimately, the Apple Watch is for people who are already deep in Apple’s ecosystem, or someone like me, who have the luxury to jump in and out. For now, I’m in. The Watch experience has been so impressive (responding to WhatsApp by speaking into my wrist is fun), I’m willing to leave Android behind as my main device.

Of course, I tried switching to the iPhone X full time back in November too, before I gave in and went back to Android three weeks later. We’ll see how long I last this time.