Apple working on ‘rugged smartwatch’ for ‘extreme sports athletes’, says report

Apple is developing an Apple Watch featuring a bigger screen and tougher design for “extreme sports athletes”. Mark Gurman, in his column in Bloomberg, reported that the sports model would feature a “nearly 2-inch display” and 7% more area than the current 45 mm watches. The watch will also be powered by a larger battery.

Gurman has previously reported on a rugged version of the Apple Watch before, but the prediction now is slightly different. In his earlier reports, Gurman had speculated that Apple could make the Watch more rugged with a rubberised exterior. This, he said, was internally called the “Explorer Edition”.

Now, the plan is for a watch with a “strong metal material rather than aluminium” and a “more shatter-resistant screen”, the Apple analyst reported.

Apple already makes a watch with a heavier metal and screen — the stainless steel and titanium models featuring a sapphire crystal display compared to the Ion-X glass found on regular, less expensive aluminium models. Those watches are aimed at people more concerned with fashion than the extreme sport enthusiast.

While the extreme sports version might not look luxurious, Gurman predicts that it would cost more than $699, the starting price of the current stainless-steel model. The Epix 2, Garmin’s version of a rugged smartwatch, retails for $900, while its Fenix 7S models have a starting price of $700.

The Bloomberg report also said that Apple was working on a new model of the Apple Watch SE, the lower-cost device released in 2020. The Series 3, Apple’s least expensive watch retailing for $199, has long become outdated and the company still sells it despite the next version of watchOS not supporting it. Introducing a new SE would give Apple the opportunity to fix the awkward pricing situation at the low end of its lineup.

The report also said that the rugged watch, the SE, and the upcoming Series 8 would all use a new processor with similar performance to this year’s chip.