Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman on Sunday looked to manage expectations as to what to expect from the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, which will be unveiled at Apple’s iPhone event on September 9.
While we had seen rumors that Touch ID may be coming to the Apple Watch this year, Gurman repeated previous comments that he doesn’t expect the Series 12 or Ultra 4 to boast any major design changes compared to the current Series 11 and Ultra 3 models.
While he said a “big redesign” is in the works for the Apple Watch, it is unlikely to arrive for another year or two.
As previously rumored, he does expect the ceramic case option to make a return to the Apple Watch Series 12 lineup. Today, he claimed that Apple has tested both white and dark gray ceramic case options, similar to those offered for the highest-end Apple Watch Series 3 in 2017.
We’ve also seen rumors of a watch band for the Series 12 that would have a health sensor embedded, but Gurman did not mention that in his article. Gurman has previously said that Apple is continues to work on a blood sugar detection feature with an aim of releasing it by 2030.
Instead of flashy updates, Gurman says to expect more ordinary spec bumps, such as a faster and more capable chip and the usual improvements to health and fitness tracking. The current Series 11 and Ultra 3 are using the same S10 chip used in the Series 10 and Ultra 2, so a newer chip, say an S11, should provide the first real performance bump for the watches in a few years.
A new feature said being tested is all day data collection by the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor, says Gurman, He added that Apple is also working to revamp the Health and Fitness apps, to provide more wellness-related metrics “in a similar fashion to increasingly popular app offerings from Whoop and Oura.”
He does not expect to see a fourth-generation Apple Watch SE 4 this year.