Force Touch on Apple Watch changes emoji color

Turlington Burns has been sharing her experience about using the Apple Watch over at Apple’s official website since the last few weeks. Every week, she talks about how she uses the Apple Watch in her daily life and for her training for one of the world’s biggest marathon, and reveals some new features of the smartwatch.

The finding that caught my attention deals with Force Touch, a technology involving pressure-sensitive electrodes around the display that can distinguish between a touch and a press to show hidden options.

Among other things, it’s possible to use Force Touch to easily change the color of animated emoji in instant messages.

Christy, who was born and raised in California but is currently preparing to run the London Marathon, paid a visit to her US friends and family this week and used the device to stay in touch with her sons.

“While we were apart, my daughter and I were sending animated emoji to the boys,” she said. “The faces are the best because they’re so expressive. If you press the screen, you can change the color,” she continued.

The post also mentions that the Apple Watch tracks the heartbeat of its wearer by blinking its LED lights “hundreds of times per second”. This allow the Watch to calculate the number of times your heart beats each minute during a workout. This method is quite different to other heart rate sensors found in Android Wear smartwatches, which generally struggle to read the wearer’s heartbeat during any activity.

[Source]