As the new Apple Watch goes on sale, the first users to get their hands on one have been complaining about problems on the web. For example, the microphone on the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra may inexplicably lose response after a period of time, causing microphone-dependent apps to pop up with error messages and stop working.
(Image from: MacRumors forum users)
Information aggregated from Apple’s official support community and MacRumors forums indicates that this bug not only causes the Noise app to pop up with such an error notification, but also affects the normal operation of Siri, dictation, hand-washing detection, and other system features.
Specifically, the Noise app will not detect volume levels when the Apple Watch is in water lock, or when the microphone/speaker is in use.
To make matters worse, user @2259 says he’s tried restarting his Apple Watch and updating the system software — both Watch OS for the watch and iOS 16.0.1 for the iPhone — and the problem still returns after After a while, the problem returned.
So it seems more likely that the problem is related to a software bug. But there are a number of users who have experienced the problem on both watches and wonder if it’s a very coincidental hardware defect.
Thankfully, Apple is aware of the problem and is expected to release a fix soon. Also in terms of after-sales return policy, the company is quite secure.
