I have owned every Apple Watch since the original. In the beginning, I was happy to overlook areas where the watch left a little to be desired because it was so good at certain tasks. As time progressed, there became a lot less that I had to overlook. By the time the Series 3 was released last year, the Apple Watch was my favorite tech product.

The Series 4 really cements the watch’s place in my tech hierarchy. The iPhone is the most important product I own, but I like my watch way more.

The watch getting so much better has actually led me to be a bit more critical of it than I used to be. The more that I am able to do with the watch, the more the limitations that is has left bother me. So while I am happier with the Apple Watch than I have even been, I see the potential to be even better.

A Quick Aside About Battery Life

Since the day I got the Series 4 watch, I have noticed that the battery life has been noticeably worse than my Series 3. For my previous watches, it was rare to finish the day under 40% battery, but I was constantly getting the 10% battery warnings on the Series 4. I tried restoring from backup, setting up as new, and removing all third party apps. Nothing fixed it.

I finally contacted Apple and sent it to them, but they could not find any problem with it.

It turns out the issue was with a different Apple Watch. The day that I got my Series 4, I connected my old Series 0 watch to my phone to use as a sleep tracker. When I disconnected it from my phone, my Series 4 battery lasted like it was supposed to.

Thoughts and Observations

So here are a few observations I have noticed (some good, some bad) in no particular order:

• As I discussed earlier, It is really fast.
• The water ejection sound is much nicer on the Series 4 than it was on the 2 and 3. It no longer sounds like a nuclear test.
• I never realized how thick the Series 3 was until comparing it to the Series 4. It is still not as thin as the Series 0 was, but it is much nicer than the 3.
• I really prefer the subtlety of the red ring on the crown on the Series 4 to the red dot on the 3, but I would still prefer nothing (or even better, something customizable).
• It has always bugged my that the Now Playing screen did not have a progress indicator. This was not a huge problem with music, but now that the watch has a native Podcast app and a bigger screen it bugs me quite a bit more. It is really annoying that there is no way to get the time remaining of a podcast on the watch.
• I think that Apple needs to go back to square one for analog style watch faces; they have a bunch of different version that all look similar but have different options for Complications and number style. I think that it would be better to just unify these with a single Analog watch face and let the placement of the Complications and the rings and numerals just be customizable. Or, they could let third party developers make faces…

I have found myself wanting to be able to use it for more because it is more enjoyable to do a quick task from my wrist than it is to pull out my phone to do something.

More exciting than wanting to use it more (for me at least), I also find myself wanting to develop for it more. I have a few app ideas that I am kicking around in my head (and one that I am actively working on), and all of them are centered around the watch.

None of these issues are enough to really diminish my feelings for the watch. It is my favorite tech product, but it is also the tech product that has the biggest room to grow.

That combination is pretty exciting.