When Apple launched the Apple Watch back in 2015, not everyone was convinced that it would take off.

It didn’t take long for it to outshine the competition with sales soon eclipsing every other smartwatch on the market.

Ask anyone with an Apple Watch if they like it, and prepare to hear about the benefits of the device for a good twenty minutes, at least.

James Prudenciano, from New Jersey, will tell you that it saved his life.

Business Insider with James’ story:

Prudenciano, 28, was hiking in New Jersey’s Hartshorne Woods Park [above] last week with his date, Paige Paruso, when the couple fell through some foliage and over a steep cliff…

Prudenciano [below] said it was after sunset, making it difficult to see. He and Paruso attempted to venture off the trail by sliding down what they believed was a short cliff. They quickly realized, however, that they were sliding towards a dropoff into the Navesink River.

“We got to the bottom and that’s when it was life or death,” Prudenciano told News 12. “I looked down and I noticed it was a straight drop to rocks and water.”

That’s not a great position to find yourself in, and then the situation worsened:

…Paruso fell into the river and wasn’t seriously injured, but Prudenciano landed on a rock, suffering three fractures in his back.

“I was screaming that I’m going to die because I really felt I was going to die,” he said in an interview with News 12. “There was no way out of this for me. I literally said my last goodbyes.”

At that point, Prudenciano’s Apple Watch automatically dialed 911.

The Apple Watch Series 5 that James was wearing is equipped with an automatic SOS feature that detects when the user has taken a hard fall.

It will ask the user if they want to dial 911, and if it detects that the user is immobile for more than a minute, it automatically calls emergency services and shares the user’s latitude and longitude.

James and his date were rescued, taken to a nearby hospital, and treated for their injuries. All Apple Watches after the Series 4 have the safety feature built-in, but the Series 5 is the model that’s been getting rave reviews.

The Guardian gave it five stars, and for good reason.

The Series 5 builds on last year’s larger-screen redesign of the Apple Watch, making one small but important change: the screen now stays on all the time.

….It’s neither heavy nor light, and hides the heart rate sensor in a curved lump on its belly comfortably sitting atop your wrist. It fits easily under shirt cuffs, which some larger smartwatches don’t. It’s water resistant to depths of 50m, which means you’ll likely never have to worry about it when you take a dip in the pool.

Oh, and as James has confirmed, it could save your life – and not just when you take a tumble off a mountain. Studies have shown that owning an Apple Watch can have major health benefits.

Keen to invest in your health in the most stylish way possible, or how about the health of that special someone? Christmas is around the corner, after all.

Digicape, South Africa’s largest independent Apple retailer, will accept up to five of your old devices as a trade-in against the purchase of any new product. So bring in your old iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, or Apple TVs, and you could save thousands of rands on an Apple Watch Series 5.

Go ahead and browse the range of Series 5 smartwatches – you know you want to.

Safety first.

[source:businessinsider&guardian]