The new Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3 were all announced yesterday during Apple’s ‘Awe dropping’ event. And while Apple made a big deal of many new features, two key features will not be available to Australians.
The big new feature Apple announced was monitoring and alerts for chronic hypertension, or high blood pressure. An Apple spokesperson told Australian Apple News that this feature “will not be available across the Apple Watch line-up at launch”.
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Our assumption is that this will require approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t have that approval yet. If history is repeated, it could be a year or more before we see that feature enabled. The ECG and hearing aid functions in the Apple Watch and AirPods Pro respectively took that long to get regulatory approval.
The second missing feature is 5G comms in Apple Watch. Australians that buy one of the new Apple Watch models in Australia will be stuck with 4G for cellular comms. Given the legal issues Apple faced in the early days of 4G deployment here, it might be waiting for regulatory endorsement or for further local testing to be completed.
While it can be dangerous to make assumptions, it’s likely these features will eventually make their way to Australian customers. But if you were holding out for those new features, then it may be worth waiting. If/when the TGA approves hypertension monitoring, it will come to later Apple Watch models.
And given the time such approvals take in Australia, you might be better off waiting for the Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4 or a later Apple Watch SE.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.