Where's The Camera

Camera is a must for FaceTime. Face Time would be a desirable feature on the watch

 

I was picturing more of a quick way of sending short video messages or short FT sessions. Could you use the iPhone for that? Yes, but that's not the point.

 

Chris I'm not talking about a megapixel camera. Im sure a vga camera like the one in the new MacBook would suffice just to give people the option. We all know why a camera is not included now (planned obsolescence) I'm sure we will see a camera in the 2nd gen.

 

True, ok what's yours?

 

Fair enough, I respect your opinion, and who knows, you may be correct. I choose to believe that corporate greed knows no bounds, and based on a long history and pattern of these companies to slow down the release of new tech in order to sell the old I think (my opinion) that planned obsolescence is more likely. Sad because despite believing this I am guilty of supporting this system. I just have to have the latest and greatest

 

Could a camera be useful for scanning? I'm always checking prices by scanning barcodes using my iP6+. Might be a possible use case for the watch. Just tossing thoughts.

 

They can be. A scanner is better. I use ProCamera 8. It has a built-in scanner for bar codes.
This one is the same one in ProCamera 8.
I have it too. It's a good one. I don't recall if it's free or not.
Barcode by Cocologics
https://appsto.re/us/s_NiF.i


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5. ☮

 

Well there is a major problem with adding a camera. Battery Life. If you started taking FaceTime calls on this thing as previously mentioned it would require a lot of processing power which would drain an already (Somewhat) poor battery life due to the size of the device. I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that this is a complimentary device. It designed to work WITH your iPhone and it is most certainly not meant to REPLACE your iPhone for functionality such as FaceTime. Although I love the apple watch and will be pre-ordering it is just a means of receiving notifications more conveniently. It just so happens apple added some really nice functionality into the watch such as taking a call and the health tracking capabilities. This is in no way a standalone device or a replacement for core functions of an iPhone.

 

Thanks for sharing your opinion, I hope this opinion holds when Apple adds a camera to an upcoming generation. You described what this device is and is not in your opinion, but many, me included thought it was odd to leave a camera out of this much like the iPad 1st gen was missing a camera only to resurface with one in subsequent editions. A camera can be useful in many settings (scanning, FaceTime, etc.) and I argue that leaving it out was nothing more that a combination of cost saving measures and planned obsolescence

 

But the iPad is a standalone device. Granted that was probably purely planned obsolescence with the iPad but this is a completely different situation. There is no way they will be able to squeeze in a big enough battery to accommodate such functionality as a camera. And even if they did it would only be a FF camera which would only be needed for things such as FaceTime. I don't understand why you'd want to FaceTime on a 1.5" screen when you have a 4.7"/5.5" iPhone you can do that on. As for a camera for taking pictures that would entail having a permanent band like the galaxy gear that is UUUUUUGLY.. They will need to start borrowing tech from the iron man suits before that can get enough power into the watch for us to make FaceTime calls on this thing

 

And if you're right and they do add a camera into the 2nd gen. Then we heard it here first and you can say I told you so

 

I remember buying a full 3G cellphone watch with camera and all from China in the early 2000's and it worked just fine, technology is there, implementation of it may be tricky, I'll give you that