The Apple Watch Does Reduce the Time You Spend on Your iPhone

Interesting analysis from Kevin Holesh, creator of Moment – an iOS app that automatically tracks how much you use your iPhone each day:

The slight majority of the Watchers, about 60%, actually saw a huge decline in their phone use after the Watch. Those checkers saw their iPhone use go down an average of 20 minutes a day after they got their Apple Watch. They also picked up their iPhone 9 fewer times each day.

He also has another interesting theory:

I have a theory that there are two types of iPhone users: the checkers and the perusers. The checkers are the people who are constantly picking up their phone to quickly check something, mostly their notifications. Checkers are the ones who leave their phone out at the dinner table, face up, to instantly see if their phone lights up.

Perusers are the one’s who use their iPhone for longer periods of time to occupy their mind and to fend off boredom. Five minutes in line at the grocery store, fifteen minutes checking Twitter at lunch. Perusers pick up their phone less often, but use it for a longer period each time they unlock their iPhone.

I tend to agree with this theory and based on my usage, I think I’m the latter. I check my phone less often, but when I do it’s for a longer period of time. I have some notifications turned on but I’ve curated them in a way that only sends the most important ones to my Watch.

What the Watch does in this case is make me much more aware of my notifications but also prevents me from picking up my phone. Why? Because most of my notifications are small things like sport scores and text messages from certain people like my wife. Getting them pushed to my Watch benefits me greatly because 75% of the time they’re notifications that do not require me to respond back. They’re purely what I would call consumption notifications — a notification that requires no physical interaction. This is where the Watch is better than the phone since it quite literally takes me a couple seconds to glance and then continue doing what I was doing.

Apple is also pushing on this initiative even more with watchOS 2. As I mentioned before, it appears that Apple wants you touching your Watch less. If I’m right, I think we see phone usage drop even more after this update hits in the Fall.