There’s few tech journalists who are as on-the-money as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Apple predictions veteran. Gurman is now reporting that Apple is working on a bigger, more rugged version of the Apple Watch for its upcoming Watch series 8, dubbed the “extreme sports” variant, targeting, as the name suggests, extreme sports athletes.
First and foremost, the model will be featuring Apple’s largest ever display on a watch, measuring in at 2 inches diagonally with a resolution of 410 pixels by 502 pixels. The screen area will be seeing a 7% upgrade. The standard variants in Watch series 8 will hone the same 1.9 inch display as last year’s lineup.
The larger display and more advanced components will be housed in a rugged metal casing, which will use a metal stronger than the standard Aluminium frame. The Variant will also feature a more scratch resistance glass and a larger battery, fine tuned to accommodate longer, more intense workouts of extreme sports athletes.
The larger area and volume are expected to be put to good use, with the screen potentially displaying more fitness metrics and the body housing finer, more advanced tracking tools. This would allow the device to make finer measurements, like change in elevation during a trekking run.
The extreme sports Apple watch is expected to be announced in September, Alongside the rest of the Watch series 8 lineup. While the rugged variant is expected to be priced at $699, Watch series 8 is also expected feature a more budget-friendly, 1.78 inch Apple Watch SE. The lineup is expected to feature the new S8 processors, which have reportedly not logged significant improvements in benchmark numbers.
