Communication and Messaging
On the Apple Watch, you can preset 12 of your favourite contacts which gives you direct access to Call and Message. However if your contact is using an Apple Watch, you can reach out to them using Digital Touch that’s represented by a finger icon. From here, you can sketch using your finger with different colours and it will be sent over as an animation.
If you’re feeling a bit spy-ish, you can send taps of morse code which can be felt like a physical tap on the other side. For a more intimate experience, you can virtually send a heart beat by long pressing the display with two fingers. It actually records using the Watch’s heart rate sensor and it gets sent over with equivalent pulsating beat rate. On top of that, you also get a wide range of emoticons as well.
While these are cool at first, it is actually quite gimmicky and you can only use it with friends that actually owns the Apple Watch. Plus with a screen this small, it is hard to draw anything that makes sense and you’re better off communicating with your phone.
Just so you know, the Watch comes with a mic and speakerphone which allows you to make and receive voice calls. The speaker could be a little better and you’ll end up using the iPhone for better audio clarity. If you’re unable to pick up the call, you can easily mute the alert by placing your palm onto the screen.
It does support Email but with most messages being sent in HTML or RichText format, the Watch often prompts you to read it on your iPhone. It only works with emails that are sent in plain text.
For normal text messages, you are able to perform quick replies from a number of pre-set messages or you can type via voice. From our test, the dictation recognition works impressively well but it will struggle when you mix some Malay and Chinese terms into the mix. With the rise of Instant Messaging, it would useful if the favourite contact view includes shortcuts for WhatsApp, FB messenger and much more.
