How Apple Watch owners can benefit from on-device Siri processing
What's the story
Apple unveiled the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 with a groundbreaking feature last week—the on-device Siri processing.
This offline Siri capability can address the users' frustrations with the smartwatch's unstable network connection.
The new feature allows some queries to be handled entirely offline, eliminating the need for a stable internet connection, which should result in significantly faster common actions.
Details
Addressing Siri's network connection woes
Siri's unstable network connection on the Apple Watch has been a major pain point for users.
The watch relies on Bluetooth connection via the iPhone to maximize power efficiency, but this method is slow and inefficient.
When out of range of the iPhone, users are left with the watch's weak Wi-Fi and/or cellular radios, resulting in long pauses and the all-too-common "working on that" announcement by Siri.
What Next?
On-device Siri processing will revolutionize assistant
The Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 feature on-device Siri processing, which could resolve the issues caused by unstable network connections.
Thanks to the increased efficacy of the newly integrated S9 chip, Apple can now run natural language machine learning models directly on the watch.
This allows some queries to be addressed offline without needing to communicate with Apple's Siri servers, thus eliminating dependency on the watch's unreliable internet connection.
Insights
Apple yet to confirm list of manageable queries
With offline Siri on the latest Apple smartwatches, users can expect faster response times and enhanced privacy.
The watch can handle basic queries independently without resorting to server-side processing.
Although the list of queries that can be managed offline has not been confirmed, Apple demonstrated workouts as an example during its keynote presentation last week.
Users can also expect to set timers and start workouts, among others, without relying on a stable network connection.