Apple just gave its most rugged smartwatch a pretty serious intelligence upgrade. The new Apple Watch Ultra 4 isn’t only getting better health tracking and longer battery life; it’s also becoming one of the more interesting places to use Apple’s new Siri AI.
With watchOS 27, the Ultra 4 gets access to a much smarter Siri that can understand personal context and tap into broader world knowledge. There’s even a dedicated Siri Modular watch face designed to put the assistant within easier reach. Siri AI will initially arrive in beta with English support on September 14, with more languages following in October. But that’s only part of what Apple is doing with AI on your wrist.
Apple is introducing a collection of features called Audio Intelligence, powered by the Ultra 4’s new S11 chip, its microphone, Apple Intelligence models running with the iPhone, and Private Cloud Compute. One of the most interesting additions is Live Rewind. If you miss something during a conversation, double-pressing the Digital Crown can bring up a text snippet covering the previous 15 seconds. You can then ask Siri about what was said or save the information for later.
Siri Recap takes that idea further. When enabled, it can create a short summary after a conversation, complete with a title and key points that you can revisit later. Apple is also bringing Sound Recognition to the Ultra 4, letting the watch alert you to things like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a crying baby. Shazam can automatically identify nearby music and surface the song in the Smart Stack. Considering some of these features involve your watch listening to the world around you, privacy is an obvious concern. Apple says Audio Intelligence doesn’t create or retain audio recordings, while processing is isolated using hardware built into the S11 chip. Live Rewind also makes a sound and displays visual indicators when activated so people nearby know it’s being used.
The Ultra 4 is still very much an adventure and fitness watch. Apple has redesigned its health sensing hardware, with heart rate now measured every five seconds throughout the day and HRV readings happening much more frequently. It also adds a new Readiness score from 0 to 10 that considers activity, training load, sleep, and health data to help you decide how hard to push that day.
Battery life has improved as well. Apple rates the Ultra 4 for up to 50 hours of normal use or 84 hours in Low Power Mode. A 15-minute charge can provide up to 18 additional hours. For particularly long outdoor activities, Max Extended Workout mode can track runs, walks, and hikes for up to 45 hours. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 is available in natural and black titanium, with preorders already open and general availability beginning September 18. It starts at $799 in the US.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.