This is the best summary I could come up with:
With a quick pinching motion, you can use it to scroll through the new smart stack of widgets in watchOS 10, pause or end timers, skip music tracks, and answer phone calls.
That’s led to understandable confusion as to how the two features differ — and why double tap isn’t available on older Apple Watches that support Assistive Touch (Series 4 or later, including the first-gen SE and Ultra).
At the most basic level, the algorithm that detects the double tap gesture is trained on data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and optical heart rate sensor collected from the wrist.
According to Clark, “the gaps in reliable signals for heart rate” were what his team used to confirm subtler motions like the double tap gesture.
Streaming music or taking calls might seem unrelated to double tap, but the algorithm must be able to account for the noise introduced by subsystems like LTE and Bluetooth.
The past few weeks with double tap have felt like a glimpse into a smartwatch future that’s independent of phones — devices that, instead of triaging notifications and calls, handle them entirely.
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