The Apple Watch Series 3 looks, acts, and feels almost exactly the same as the Series 2 with a key difference—LTE wireless connectivity, whether your iPhone is nearby or not. We tested the Series 3 on-site at Apple’s unveiling event, including trying just a few of the new features.

If you liked the previous model, you’ll like the Series 3. If you didn’t, there’s not much different besides LTE. But maybe LTE is what’s been holding you back—it is for a lot of people. So let’s get into it.

How LTE works on the watch

The Series 3 watch still uses your iPhone’s connection when the phone is nearby, but as soon as you move away from the phone, the Series 3 LTE seamlessly kicks in. We weren’t able to test this at the event; all the Watches on display were flying solo, sans phones.

You can make calls directly from the Watch by tapping a button on the top-left corner of the watch face. From there, you can browse contacts to reach out to through a few interfaces: favorites, recents, contacts, and the keypad. So it’s just like using your phone—or really, like the previous Apple Watch, for the most part. The difference is that you can do it anywhere.

The Watch intelligently picks up your voice, and you do not have to hold it up to your mouth—in ideal conditions, anyway.

As expected, all models of the Series 3 do GPS, but LTE is an addition. We also tested location services by locating the event on Apple Maps. It’s still a tight screen to work with, so its usefulness is debatable. But it was able to pinpoint our location without a phone nearby.

In practice, the Apple Watch Series 3 is very similar to its predecessor. It just does it all without the phone, which is great, because the phone proximity limitation was the biggest downside of the Series 2.























Battery life

The Series 2 could last about two days on a single charge. The LTE Series 3 only lasts around one day. That’s a little disappointing, but it’s right at most people’s tolerance threshold.

Form factor and styling

The form factor did not feel at all different from the Series 2. Tim Cook said, when announcing the Watch, that it is only 0.25mm thicker at one point. We didn’t notice this when wearing it. We tried both sizes of the new Watch, and they each looked and felt the same as their predecessors.

The LTE version of the watch has a red knob instead of a silver one, but that’s all there is to it. Of course, there are a plenty of wristbands, and they all look great.

If it sounds like we’re not revealing much here, that’s because there’s not much to reveal. The Series 3 is the same watch you’ve used before, but with LTE. But that’s a critical addition, and you already know what it means.