I’ve just recently updated my Series 3 to WatchOS 7.4 and 2 days later to 7.4.1 … yeah it took at least an hour for the minor and half an hour for the patch … in general both felt pretty slow but I didn’t need to reset/wipe anything in advance.
I wouldn’t buy a Series 3 today, as mentioned in the article: the price diff isn’t significant. Though updating the watchOS wasn’t such a bad experience as the author described it. Feels a bit like a rant post.
>>> I didn’t need to reset/wipe anything in advance
The probable explanation is that you have AW S3 Cellular model (which comes with 16Gb).
Usually it's next to impossible to update AW S3 (available at Apple Store) since it only has 8Gb without unpairing and resetting as the OS quickly builds up caches/system files which can't be removed by the user.
Hence, even if you didn't load anything (no apps or music, for instance), you'll have to go through the whole process.
>>> If you have Apple Watch Series 3, skip directly to the steps to unpair and update your Apple Watch [1].
Notice how Apple tells the users "don't even bother trying to clear up the storage" and directs to the unpairing process straight away.
I felt this pain a few months ago on my series 3 and the it took a several minutes before it even started the download, only for it to finish with an alert that there wasn’t enough storage to update
We've seen this rodeo before with the 16GB iPhone 6 and 6s.
Apple's decisions to be exceedingly stingy with storage will bite them in the long run as the security of their ecosystem comes into question due to devices that don't have enough storage to update.
The added costs of flash, for holding say 2GB in reserve for system updates, are miniscule.
You mean it comes into the same question as various Android devices devices that have an outdated version installed on sale and will never receive any update? I don‘t think the broad audience will care that much...
However, I agree that not being able to update because of disk space is more bothering to most people than not being able to update because, well, there are no updates [for this specific device].
You do know that Android devices now receive regular security updates and system component updates beside OS version updates?
That said, small storage used to cause all kind of problems in Androids too (in particular Sony Ericsson devices). IIRC it also caused some issues for Windows Phones updating from 7 to 7.1 to 8 and finally 10.
I wouldn’t buy a Series 3 today, as mentioned in the article: the price diff isn’t significant. Though updating the watchOS wasn’t such a bad experience as the author described it. Feels a bit like a rant post.