I was out travelling on Friday and didn't return until late. But when I got home, there was a nice new delivery box from Apple.
And of course, inside the scrappy brown box a nice shiny white one:
First impression was that the "Gold" for this watch is definitely more "Rose Gold" than my series 2. That was a surprise, since there is nothing in the description on Apple's web site that makes that clear. I have seen a few other comments on forums where other's have also been a little surprised. Here's the Series 2 Gold sitting next to the Series 3 Gold (series 2 is on the left)
With the pink strap that came with the series 3 it was a little too bouffant for me, so I have currently swapped the strap to a midnight blue one which came with the series 2 (which was always the plan anyway), and I picked up a Product(RED) one to match the red Digital Crown on the side of the cellular version which I'll wear for sport. Quick point on the Midnight Blue band that I have from series 2 - it has a gold press stud which doesn't match the new "rose gold" but that's not a big deal for me. (I'll add some photo's later of the various combo's of strap and watch I have)
Enabling Cellular with EE in the UK
Failing to enable Cellular on EE in the UK
Once I setup the watch and paired to my iPhone, I tapped on Mobile Data in the watch app get started with cellular. It prompted me to sign into my EE account and then returned an error (code 007) *sigh*. EE support was closed on Friday night, so I called them on Saturday morning at 8am, and was told that I could not use Apple Watch on a business account. What? I was not very happy with that news - my phone number is on our business account, as are quite a few others, changing to a personal account did not seem feasible.
I waited until 9 to call the business team (they get a lie- in on Saturday, because, you know, they're business). They were much more helpful and were able to adjust my account to a personal tariff while still keeping me on a business contract - all internal issues it seems, driven by technical restrictions (I asked) and not any policy decision. Yes I have ended up paying an extra £20 a month for my shared phone tariff, but have increased the shared data to 100gb a month (we were on 30gb) so doesn't seem unfair, and the watch is free for 6 months with unlimited data, after which it is £5 a month for 10gb which I expect will be more than enough.
However at this point on Sunday morning, I still don't have 4G cellular enabled, we managed to get passed the 007 error, but get a nice new 012 error instead. The business team. to their credit, were painfully aware of this, and have promised to resolve on Monday with me. I'll report back.
It is quite remarkable that EE were so unprepared for this scenario, check twitter and the EE community web sites and they are full of people with small business accounts at EE who can't understand why they are unable to have cellular on their nice new Apple Watches. Had EE not considered that small business's would buy any watches?
Some other first impressions
- It's fast! So much more fluid and quick than series 2!
- I wear my watch in the shower, and often play music on my phone which is sitting nearby. With series 2 I could never really swipe the screen in the shower (to change the music for example) if it got wet. With series 3 I could do that easily? I'm not sure what the improvements are that Apple made but it seems like series 3 is much more usable when wet. This could be interesting in the pool and open water swimming.
- I got a watch with a soft "click" on the Digital Crown 😭 - it doesn't feel great and it's hard to know if you have pressed it. I have it booked in to the Apple Store to look at on Tuesday - they have the watch in stock at the store as I write, so hopefully it will be a straight swap.
- I couldn't unlock my iMac with the watch - it shows up in the preferences panel > Security and Privacy, along with my series 3, which is cool because it clearly supports multiple watches, but you have to be running High Sierra for it to work with Apple Watch 3 so that should be sorted tomorrow when High Sierra is released and I install it.
- Battery life was great on my first day - no sports on this day, and no cellular or course, but I was playing with the watch on and off all day. I wore it all day and through the night and had 30 % when I woke. I put it on the charger at 7am and it was back to 100% when I just checked now at 8:15.
Looks like a beautiful day today - perfect for my super sprint training tri!
Cheers!
Ian