I believe I’m in the minority on this topic, but I really dislike the squarish design of the Apple Watch and wish they’d switch (or add) a round-faced model.
Yes, I know, you don’t fit as much information on the screen that way, but IMO a watch serves the dual-purpose of being 50% fashion/jewelry and 50% function. Note: I’m just throwing out 50% as a wild number…I haven’t really mulled over what a more accurate breakdown would be for my needs/desires, and I believe that this ratio will differ for everyone.
I dabbled with Android phones over the last couple of years and really liked a lot about the experience, but especially liked the Google Wear OS and round-faced watches. I bought a Skagen Falster Gen 6 watch and that, to me, was the ultimate in beautiful design/fashion, and it even had some very cool watch faces OOTB. I believe that Wear OS offers better customizability of watch faces, too.
With the Apple Watch, I feel like the watch face options are all about function with the styles really lacking from a “fashion” perspective.
I switched back to an iPhone but still prefer my Skagen Wear OS watch when going out to dinner and I have a lot of stylish bands that I swap in/out with it. There’s a Skagen app for the iPhone that allows me to use *some* of the functionality that it’s capable of and allows me access to *some* nice watch faces, but it’s a lot more limited when pairing it to an iPhone than it was when pairing it to an Android phone.
I also bought a lot of watch bands for my Apple Watch, and that’s fun, but the overall “package” still feels/looks more like I’m wearing a nerdy Casio Calculator watch on my wrist, as opposed to a fashionable piece of jewelry.
I do love a lot about my Apple Watch, too. I wore it snorkeling on a recent vacation (the Skagen may have been capable of that, too), and since it’s fully supported in the Apple ecosystem, I can take better advantage of the functionality between the watch and my iPhone (e.g., triggering the shutter on my iPhone’s camera). I also love the haptic feedback (e.g., alerting me to messages with what truly feels like a “tap” on my wrist) that only the Apple Watch offers. And yesterday I finally got around to installing a smart lock on one of my doors, and it‘s pretty cool to hold my Apple Watch up to it to unlock/lock the door.
My current Apple Watch is several generations old now (I believe it’s the Series 6 Nike Edition Stainless Steel model), but I haven’t seen a whole lot change over the newer generations that got me excited enough to lay out a sizeable chunk of money to upgrade. The Ultra model, being larger and with larger-width bands, would likely be the one I’d want to upgrade to. But if they made the watch face round with a classy/clean/simple look (which they’d probably do a decent job of), I’d be throwing my money at them.
Sadly, the truth is that even if they don’t give me what I want, I‘ll probably go ahead and buy the next Ultra model they release this year (or pick up a discounted prior-gen model if the rumors here of them barely changing anything on the next Ultra turn out to be true), since my Series 6 is feeling old now.