The Apple Watch gets a slight visual upgrade with the Series 7

As expected, today Apple announced details about the next version of the Apple Watch. Dubbed the Apple Watch Series 7, it has a new retina display with 20% more screen area, brighter indoor performance, and smaller bezels that are 40% thinner.

Apple says the screen is the most durable "crack resistant" display on an Apple Watch thanks to "stronger geometry." The Series 7 is also IPX6 dust resistant, a first for Apple Watches, in addition to being water-resistant up to 50 meters. Apple says the bigger display area facilitated the introduction of a full QWERTY keyboard that can be typed or swiped through to enter text. The larger screen also means slightly larger watch cases. Each grew one millimeter from 40 and 44 millimeters on the Series 6 to 41 and 45 millimeters on the Series 7.

During today's Apple announcement event, there wasn't much said regarding new internals. Apple didn't mention a new chip or any other computing components for this upcoming watchOS 8 powered device. But there have finally been improvements to charging speeds. With the new USB-C Apple Watch charger, Apple says the Series 7 can charge from zero to 80 percent in 45 minutes and achieve eight hours of sleep tracking from just an eight-minute charge. Although Series 7's battery charges 33 percent faster than its predecessor, it still has the same 18-hour battery life as the Series 6.

Among the sprinkle of new fitness features teased via promotional video, the Series 7 can measure users' tennis serve speed or the distance of a golf drive, and "Hey Siri" prompts can tell users how far they've biked. The Series 7 will also detect biking sessions and auto-pause and restart for stops. Fall detection while biking has been added, and Apple says the algorithm for ebiking has been improved to calculate calories more accurately. Sleep tracking also adds respiratory rate to the sleep data.

The Apple Watch Series 7 will be available in new aluminum colors, midnight, starlight, green, blue, red, silver, graphite, gold, stainless steel, as well as natural titanium and space black titanium. Apple also announced a Hermès edition with new bands. Preorders begin next week starting at $399, while units will start shipping "later this fall."