Hands-On With the New Theater Mode in watchOS 3.2

I don't get it at all - how this is remotely useful. Who is spending that much time in dark places to justify its own easily accessible setting for this feature?

I have my watch always on silent and I get haptic feedback all day, every day. When exactly was it ever an issue to have the screen light up, turning the situation into an inconvenient moment? Even in a theatre/cinema, it is not like my watch will light up the entire room.

As a weekly theatre-goer, you'd be surprised how annoying even a little bit of light can be. This is a good feature. Not an "OMG I have to upgrade immediately" type of feature, but a good one anyway.

Here is my watch with theater mode. Works great.

I have literally been wishing for this feature since the first day I had my Apple Watch at launch. I have no idea why someone would complain about it being added. The people who find their way onto these forums never cease to amaze me. You lose literally nothing with Apple adding this feature. You don't care about distracting people in the theatre? Fine. Never tap that button. Never go to the theatre? Probably not a concern to you then. Don't own an Apple watch? Why do you think your opinion is valid?

All the existing buttons on the swipe-up panel are still there. They just made it taller. Nobody loses anything. Considerate theatre-goers get a nice boost in convenience.

Seems like a widely-deployed solution to a very small problem.

That damn "Emergency Exit" Sign over the escape door right next to the damn screen needs a theater mode! Annoys me every time.

As a weekly theatre-goer, you'd be surprised how annoying even a little bit of light can be. This is a good feature. Not an "OMG I have to upgrade immediately" type of feature, but a good one anyway.

Right? I hate to witness someone being so completely ignorant of how rude they are like this. If you think your apple watch turning on in a theatre isn't incredibly rude, you need some serious recalibration of whatever part of your brain determines this.

To be perfectly clear: any light source in a theatre coming from a person is rude and very distracting. Period. It's never okay. And it's almost always 10x brighter than you think it's going to be. In fact, the farther away you are from it, the worse and more distracting it becomes as that is the nature of light, the smaller the source of light relative to your view, the higher contrast it will have in the view.

So in reality, the watch lighting up is actually worse than a phone. And personally, I have always gone through the trouble of manually setting my watch to behave as this mode does during any movie screening I attend. I'll be very happy to be able to do it in a swipe + tap.

On another note, I wonder about the water icon there. It's not there on my current watch. Is this a series 2 specific feature? If not, is it also new? What does it do?