Hands-On With the New 'Face Gallery' for Apple Watch in iOS 10

While not there, it's another step closer to 3rd party watch faces.

To me, watchOS 3 was the biggest news and surprise of WWDC.

I'm really looking forward to that and iPhone 7 running iOS 10 this fall.

I want my Watch to have a Star Trek next generation graphics.

Here's my current face gallery...

I'd say it's 100% certain that 3rd party watch faces are coming. But there needs to be an API built first (and whatever security concerns have to be dealt with). I'm sure they're definitely working on it, but not as a top priority. I'd bet we'll see this in watchOS 4.

Besides. It's another revenue stream. So it's definitely coming.

I think Apple did a phenomenal job with watchOS 3. The finesse, the features, the restraint, the UX, the boost in performance, the choices across the board. Phenomenal is the word. Damn, one less reason to fire Tim Cook. MR won't sleep tonight. Oh but yeah, this comment means I'm incapable of criticising Apple. That's always a great next-best argument. If you can't counter the point, attempt to discount the point-maker.

They still have some stability issues to work out (obvious, as it's only a beta.) Especially with bluetooth (I haven't dug around enough to find out what they've changed in that area, if anything, but something's changed.)

I setup a custom modular face, and had been using it since the day iOS 10 (iPhone 6 Plus) and watchOS 3.0 betas came out.

Today, I noticed that my watch face was set to the default "Activity Digital" face somehow. Tried setting it back to my custom face, and noticed that mine was completely gone off the watch.

Opened the My Watch app on my phone, and it was gone from there too. Tried adding it back to my watch, and nothing happened. Tried customizing the default modular face right on the watch ... nothing happened. It was like it was completely ignoring my taps.

Powered-off the watch, and powered it back on. No difference.

Turned off bluetooth on my phone, and then turned it back on. Suddenly it started working again.

Been having other really odd bluetooth issues with my phone and my car's head unit as well. Only unpairing my phone from my car, "forgetting" my car on my phone, and then re-pairing them seems to fix it, until the issues start happening again. Issues range from really loud Siri and hands-free voice calls (even though I had turned them down prior), to skips in songs after completing a hands-free call, requiring a complete unpair-repair before songs won't skip anymore. (By "skip", I don't mean skip a whole song. I mean skip like a record skipping. For those too young to know, this is a record ('https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Vinyl_LP.jpg') (aka: LP).)

I'll add here that I restored the phone back to iOS 9.3.2 to troubleshoot, in case it was a possible hardware issue. The skipping and hands-free volume issues went away. So, it's definitely something to do with iOS 10.

There's also another common issue with losing cellular data connections when not on wi-fi. A complete "reset network settings" on the phone usually fixes it.

Last several noticeable issue I've been having are (for which I currently have no knowledge of a circumvention):

- Any videos on a website automatically playing when the page loads,
- Some sites just not loading at all, and
- Links on some sites not loading after tapped (like the taps aren't even registering for some reason.)
- Phone will do a soft reset from time to time due to an app crashing hard, but it doesn't happen as often for me as it did with the iOS 9 betas.

Other than those issues, it's been a fairly stable beta for me compared to the iOS 9 ones I used, considering it's the very first one.

This is proof AW is a flop

I'll be honest. Before this last keynote, I was really sick of the Apple Watch and how incomplete it felt. WatchOS 3 is actually making me excited again like I was when they first announced it. Like it's finally a finished product! Just a refinement of the original features, nothing new. I can see it halving my battery life though. But at least that way the only new feature of Apple Watch 2 will be a double-sized battery to keep it at 18 hours! It'll be like iPad 1 > iPad 2. The first gen of both had a lot of wasted empty space, so they could keep costs down and make it much thinner the second time while adding a bigger battery! (Fingers crossed)

Anyone else notice that the "Activity Digital" watch face has DIGITAL SECONDS on it?

THE LONG SECONDLESS NIGHTMARE IS OVER!!!1!