Apple explores adding camera to Apple Watch

An Apple patent application illustration published in 2019 reveals an Apple Watch Band with a built-in rotatable camera (source: USPTO via Patently Apple)
Apple is exploring the concept of adding a camera and visual intelligence features to its market-dominating Apple Watch.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Apple’s ultimate plan for Visual Intelligence goes far beyond the iPhone. The company wants to put the feature at the core of future devices, including the camera-equipped AirPods that I’ve been writing about for several months. Along the way, Apple also wants to shift Visual Intelligence toward its own AI models, rather than those from OpenAI and Google.
But Apple’s vision for AI wearables goes even further. The company is working on new versions of the Apple Watch that include cameras. As with the future AirPods, this would help the device see the outside world and use AI to deliver relevant information. These models are likely still at least generations away from hitting the market, but they are on the road map.
As part of this plan, Apple is considering adding cameras to both its standard Series watches and Ultra models. The current idea is to put the camera inside the display of the Series version, like the front-facing lens on the iPhone. The Ultra will take a different approach, with the camera lens sitting on the side of the watch near the crown and button.

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MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in October 2017:
Since Apple Watch Series 2 gave us GPS and freed us from having to schlep along our iPhones on runs, we can’t count the times we’ve wished we had a camera on our Apple Watches. Look at that sunset! Look at that ocean! Look at that three-legged one-eyed dog!
Things like that, not so much the Dick Tracy FaceTime stuff (but that would be cool, too), are why we’re so interested in things like the CMRA Dual-Camera Band for Apple Watch.
Well, Series 2 gave us GPS. Series 3 gave us LTE. Maybe Series 4 will finally add a camera or – dare we dream? – cameras, possibly via an Apple Smartband?

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