Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 launched: Price in India starts at Rs 56,900, new health sensors and Readiness score

Apple has launched the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4, both built around a new health sensing system and the S11 chip. The Series 12 starts at Rs 56,900 and the Ultra 4 at Rs 1,09,900. Pre-orders open today, with stores getting stock on Friday, September 18.The sensors are where the year's work has gone. New optical and electrical heart sensors, larger green LEDs and a wider electrode surface let both watches read heart rate every five seconds through the day and sample heart rate variability up to 24 times more often than before. Apple claims the most accurate heart rate sensing in any wearable, citing a study of more than 1,000 people against rival devices. One thing Indian buyers should note is that hypertension notifications will not be available here on either watch at launch, with Apple expecting clearance next year.Readiness gives Apple a daily score its rivals have offered for yearsThe new Readiness feature reads recent activity, training load, vitals and sleep to produce a single score from 0 to 10 each morning, along with a plain instruction to recover, pace yourself, or go for it. It shifts through the day as new data arrives, and taps open the factors behind it. Apple built the algorithm on its own Heart and Movement Study. Battery has moved too. The Ultra 4 now claims more than two days of use, up to 45 hours of workout tracking in its longest mode, while the Series 12 holds at 24 hours a day and 10 hours of outdoor workout tracking.Audio Intelligence turns the watch into a listening device, so Apple leads with the privacy caseLater this year, the S11 chip enables Sound Recognition for alarms and doorbells, Live Rewind to pull up a text snippet of the last 15 seconds of a conversation, and Siri Recap for short summaries of what was discussed. Apple says none of it records or stores audio, that raw sound is processed inside an isolated part of the chip and deleted, and that speakers are never identified.watchOS 27 arrives on Monday, September 14, with Siri AI in beta and in English first.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.