While rumors of various iPhone 12 production delays have been running rampant essentially ever since it first became clear that the coronavirus pandemic would cause ripples throughout the supply chain, we’ve heard very little so far about any possible disruptions in Apple’s traditional smartwatch release schedule.

A more powerful chip, longer battery life, and sleep tracking (at last!)

Let’s start with an easy prediction, shall we? According to the aforementioned tech vlogger, as well as history and common sense, the Apple Watch Series 6 will come packing a homebrewed S6 processor. Set to follow in the footsteps of last year’s S5, 2018’s S4, and so on, this will undoubtedly be faster than all its forerunners, although the actual magnitude of its performance boost remains unknown.

Perhaps more importantly, however, the S6 SoC also needs to be significantly more energy-efficient than its predecessors, as the Apple Watch Series 6 is expected to raise the battery life bar to finally support sleep tracking functionality. This is one of the very few features most Android-compatible smartwatches offer that the Apple Watch does not, which the company has been reportedly working on fixing for quite some time now.

Battery life was always the biggest hurdle preventing Apple from catching up to the competition, but Cupertino may have cracked the puzzle and found a way to keep the Series 6 going through a full day’s work and night’s sleep without completely emptying the tank. Let’s just hope the solution is not to make the smartwatch considerably thicker and bulkier to accommodate a larger cell.

A major new sensor and a welcome expansion of the health monitoring toolset

While the above features could certainly provide some meaningful user experience improvements, the true innovation of the Apple Watch Series 6 is likely to come from its built-in pulse oximeter and mental health abnormalities detection. 

As it turns out, Apple could enable the groundbreaking technology of measuring your blood oxygen levels directly from your wrist with the aforementioned pulse oximeter as early as this fall, although FDA clearance is obviously required and that might still lead to a delay of some sort.