The Apple Watch could be due for the biggest feature shake-up it has had in a long time. Apple is working on adding a camera to the Watch series, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The end goal is not to have people going around snapping still photos with their Apple Watches rather than their iPhones, but to give the Apple wearable the ability to see and analyze the world around the user. It will employ Apple Intelligence to recognize and react to objects and scenes shown to the Watch’s camera.
A version of this feature is already available in the iPhone 16, dubbed visual intelligence.
“You can use visual intelligence to quickly learn more about the places and objects around you,” Apple says on its website.
It’s used to translate text, look up details of businesses, recognize plants and animals and read text out loud. Presumably all of this, and more, will come to Apple Watch if these plans pan out.
This makes more sense in the way Apple is reportedly set to put a camera in the Apple Watch Ultra. It’s expected to be placed in the side of the watch, by the crown. This positioning will let you effectively point your arm at an object and have the Watch Ultra’s camera see it.
The standard Apple Watch is expected to put the camera in the screen area, which may make capturing certain scenes, to give them the visual intelligence treatment, a little more awkward.
It could make the camera effectively invisible, though. There are now under-screen cameras that sit behind the display panel. Apple is rumored to be developing this tech for the iPhone series.
While early versions of this tech still made it clear where the camera was, the screen often seeming to have a small lower-resolution section, Apple has since improved it dramatically.
Apple Watch With Camera Release Date
When will the Apple Watch with camera come? Not this year — it isn’t expected to arrive until 2027.
Visual intelligence in the Apple Watch could serve as a precursor to Apple smart glasses, which have long been rumored but never officially acknowledged.
In January, Apple had reportedly shelved plans for smart glasses that would connect to a Mac — again a report from Mark Gurman. However, the concept has since resurfaced, as a product in contention for a public release by the end of the decade.
Meta is already into its second generation of consumer-focused smart glasses, thanks to its collaboration with Ray-Ban. The Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer can be used to capture video and stills, to play audio and interact with Meta AI, but they do not have the kind of visual intelligence proposed for a future Apple Watch.
