Goodbye to Apple Watch Series 3 after five years of official support
The Apple Watch Series 3 was officially launched in september 2017. Now Apple’s well-known Asian supply chain analyst hints that it will reach its EOL, end of life for its acronym in English, in the third quarter of this year. He has thus expressed it on his recently created Twitter account:
Apple Watch Series 3 may go to end-of-life (EOL) in 3Q22 because the computing power can’t meet the requirements of the new watchOS.
— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) March 21, 2022
The reason given for this withdrawal is that their hardware cannot “support the requirements of the new watchOS”. It refers to watchOS 9, which we hope to see at the next WWDC 2022 and that it would predictably leave in September of this same year. So the dates fit and lend credence to Kuo’s information.
The Apple Watch Series 3 launched five years ago. And since then, it has continued to be sold on the Apple website and other sellers along with the Apple Watch Series 7 and Apple Watch SE, placing it in the 219 euro range. With discounts and promotions, it is common to see it even below 200 euros.
The Series 3 was the first Apple Watch with a 4G connection. that allowed data independence from the iPhone. Of course, its battery consumption is high and you cannot expect to have a full day with the 4G connection activated constantly. It was also the last model to have the original design which debuted in 2015.
It is strange that Apple is going to continue selling this model just before it withdraws software support. It enters within the possible, because it is still a capable watch. Here we must indicate that Kuo is not an infallible analyst and has sometimes failed, so he could well withdraw from his sale, but have a longer watchOS support.