Apple has accomplished something really extraordinary in the physical design of the Series 4 Apple Watch. They have managed to give us a far bigger display area in a watch that is barely larger than it was in the previous generations. I wanted to figure out a way to convey this without just splatting out a bunch of dimensions to you. But I had to start by compiling all of the data, as I do when I dig deep into a topic. I found two useful definitive sources from Apple. This tool gives you almost every spec I needed, with height and width and thickness and weight for each version of Apple Watch, but it was missing one important spec. For the display area comparisons, I went to. Between these two links and a lot of opening of separate tabs and scrolling around, I was able to make a spreadsheet comparing all of the measurements I found relevant in comparing the new Apple Watch 4 to the older Series 2 and 3. Armed with the specs, I could calculate even more data. I had the width, height, and thickness of all the watches, so of course I should calculate volume. I had the pixel width and height, so how about the total number of pixels. Ooh, with the total number of pixels and the total pixel area, I can calculate the pixel density. Obviously stainless would weigh significantly more, and it turns out having cellular in some models increases the weight a smidge. One thing to keep in mind is that the Series 2 is the exact same size and weight and display area as the Series 3. If you have a Series 2, as you listen to me describe the differences to the Series 4, the comparison applies to your watch as well. It occurred to me that I needed a better way to tell the story. You heard on the keynote that the new one is bigger, referred to as 44mm. The question I sought to answer for you was how much bigger would that feel and what would you gain for that bigger size. For that tiny percentage increase in physical size, you get 32% more display area. So you get a huge increase in display area with a very minor increase in physical size, but a noticeable increase in the weight. The difference in physical dimensions on the smaller watch is even less noticeable. The Series 4 smaller watch does gain weight. In fact, it packs on 13% more weight than the Series 3. However, the new watch packs in a display area that is 35% larger. I just finished saying the one thing I wanted was thinner, but I lied. But I never thought to ask for both at the same time. Well, I ran those numbers too. This comparison is the Series 4 40mm Apple Watch vs. This will be a big drop in volume as the new smaller watch will be 7% narrower, 6% shorter, and 6% thinner, for a total volume drop of 17% and you get a drop of 7% in weight. In fact, you get 2% more even though the Series 4 40mm is so much smaller. I decided to graph some of what I just told you. I struggled with how to make it tell a story and not be all boring like the numbers were already. People love to make 3D bar graphs but you actually lose information that way. A hundred years ago at work, I came out apple watch sizes series 4 a style of graph that looks 3D without making it more confusing. Create a standard boring bar chart. Now select your bars and change the fill from solid to gradient. You want to set it to linear, with the angle at 180°. Then with the little gradient stops sliders, set the right and left to the same dark color, and change the middle one to a lighter hue of the same color. So anyway, back to the Apple Watch chart. I figured the most interesting one might be the total apple watch sizes series 4 area. I made my pretty cylinders and then painstakingly drew in some lines to say the percentage difference between the heights of the bars, and it was looking pretty good. I showed it to a few people, and Pat Dengler said it needed some pretty pictures. Anyway, Pat suggested I use these pictures to snaz up my graph. I cut each picture out, opened the crops in Preview, used the magic wand to erase the empty white space, and then copied each image back into Excel, plopping each one on top of its respective bar. In Excel and probably in Google Sheets you can click once to select all of the bars in your chart, but then click again to select just one. In our example, I had the 44mm Series 4 watch graphic in my clipboard. When I selected it, it made the graphic be the bar, but stretched the whole height of the bar. Back in the Format Data Point menu, change the default from Stretch to Stack. I used to make these at work when I felt like irritating my boss. No sense of humor at all. Then I started playing around with how to show the case dimensions in a pretty graph. This took a bit of trickery though. The first three dimensions are in millimeters, while the weight is in grams. I figured out that Excel would happily plot the four data points for weight as though they were millimeters. When I entered the weight data, I created a custom format of 0. I can turn on the data labels just for the weight bars and it looks perfectly reasonable. But then I had another idea for a visual effect. You may remember a blog post I just did last month entitled. Instead, I simply drew rounded rectangles. But then I got the idea to plop the two old watches on top of the two newer models. So all you see is apple watch sizes series 4 rounded rectangles on the left for the two big watches Series 3 on top of Series 4 and the two little watches again with Series 3 on top of Series 4. I was looking for such detailed information. Now, there is one thing that is missing. What size are the screens, width and height, in inches. I noticed that Apple omitted such basic info for iPhones and iPad, too. The dimensions you seek can be calculated using the data you referenced. If we take the square root of the pixel density, then we have the linear pixel density. I do have to assume square pixels for all this. Given that linear density, we can calculate the height and width in mm. The square root of 164 is 12. The width is 312 pixels so if we divide that by 12. If you want that in inches, there are 25.
