Mike Wuerthele
A pair of assets have been harvested out of the latest watchOS 6 beta, pointing to new Apple Watch models in ceramic and titanium coming in the fall.
Two new images contained in the most recent run of beta releases the Apple Watch clearly show titanium and ceramic model nomenclature. Data about the new models has been determined similar to how a September 10 date was extracted for the "iPhone 11" launch event.
The images, spotted by iHelpBR come from the on-boarding screens for the Apple Watch, and there are 40mm and 44mm versions. The images are from the animation that plays during initial Apple Watch setup.
After Apple cancelled the gold "Edition" model, the company used ceramic for the Series 2 and Series 3 models. However, Apple didn't offer a ceramic model for the Apple Watch Series 4, and has never offered titanium.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted in early 2019 that the material would make a return to the Apple Watch. Saturday's revelations are the first time that titanium has been rumored as a casing material for the Apple Watch. More recently, Kuo has declared that the fall Apple Watch releases will have some screens sourced by Japan Display.
Beyond very small amounts in fabrication, the only other current Apple product that uses a lot of titanium is the Apple Card.
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54 Comments
A former coworker had a ceramic Series 3. I always thought it looked very nice, I liked the looks of it a little more than my Space Black SS Series 0. I’m happy to see it may be coming back.
I’m still hoping for a liquid metal edition...
Ceramic is one of those things where it seems cool except nobody knows it's ceramic aside from you and a few major Apple nerds. Only reason I could see to do it would be if they wanted to use it for different colours. But again they can already use aluminum for that. I still think they should make a low end model with a white polycarbonite case.
After paying extra for the black stainless Series zero to get the black link band only to have watch become... just a watch (with poor battery life and an unresponsive iOS interface), I am never paying extra for a fancy material on the same limited-life electronics. Aluminum is just fine for me.