The Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 are expected on stage at Apple’s 9 September event, and the clearest picture yet of what they change comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, writing in his “Power On” newsletter and reported by MacRumors. Treat all of this as rumour rather than confirmation — but the short version is that the interesting change is inside the case, not outside it, and there is no cheaper model coming to sit under them.
Apple Watch Series 12: a new chip and a harder-working sensor
Gurman does not expect any major design change from the current Series 11 and Ultra 3, according to MacRumors’ account of the newsletter. That also puts a line through the Touch ID rumour that circulated earlier in the year, and Gurman reportedly made no mention at all of the other floating claim — a watch band with a health sensor built into it.
What he does expect is a ceramic case option returning for the Series 12, in white and dark grey, echoing the finishes Apple offered on the top-end Series 3 in 2017. Ceramic is a cosmetic and price-tier move rather than a functional one, so the more consequential item is the chip. The Series 11 and Ultra 3 both run the same S10 silicon that shipped in the Series 10 and Ultra 2, meaning an S11 or newer would be the first genuine performance step in three generations of Apple Watch.
On the health side, one feature said to be in testing lets the heart-rate sensor collect data continuously through the day rather than sampling it periodically, with Apple also reworking the Health and Fitness apps to surface more wellness metrics — the direction Whoop and Oura have been pushing. That is worth thinking about before switching it on: continuous heart-rate logging is both a battery cost and a much denser stream of physiological data than most people currently generate, and Apple has not yet shown how granular the resulting record is or how it will be presented.
No Apple Watch SE 4, and the redesign is further out
The detail with the most immediate effect on buyers is the one that is not launching: Gurman does not expect an Apple Watch SE 4 this year. The SE is the entry point into the line, so on that reading the cheap end of the range sits out this cycle entirely while the flagship gets its first chip bump in years. What Apple does with the existing SE — keep it on sale, reprice it, or drop it — is not something either source addresses.
Beyond this generation, Gurman reportedly describes a “big redesign” in the works but says it is unlikely to land for another year or two, and he has previously put Apple’s blood-sugar detection goal at 2030. Read together, that makes the Series 12 an interim update — a faster chip, an extra case material, and a sensor working harder, on a body that has not moved.
None of this is official. Apple has not announced the Series 12 or the Ultra 4, and specifications, pricing and availability will only be settled on 9 September.
Source: Mark Gurman, Bloomberg, via MacRumors
