The Apple Watch received notable health-focused upgrades at Apple’s September event, alongside speculation about a rumoured screen-free wearable that could offer a calmer alternative to constant notifications. This year’s autumn line-up covered the key portable products Apple maintains with its customers, spanning the iPhone, AirPods, and the wrist-worn devices.
Beyond the discussion of features such as Audio Intelligence and its privacy implications, along with an overhaul of Siri, health remained a central theme for the latest wearable models.
Expanded Sensing and a New Readiness Score
Apple has introduced a new health-sensing system featuring an expanded electrode surface area, additional electrodes, and an improved photodiode array. The system now checks the wearer’s heart every five seconds, allowing users to observe how their heart rate varies throughout the day.
A new Readiness score offers a straightforward way to gauge one’s capacity to exercise or simply to manage the day ahead. While it stops short of directly urging users to sleep more or work out more, it provides a clear signal to those who may need to pay closer attention to their wellbeing.
These metrics feed into wider changes in the Health app on iPhone and iPad, which now makes greater use of Apple Intelligence. Among the new additions is Health Age, a feature that compares a user’s health metrics against their chronological age. Some may find the comparison flattering, while others may see additional years reflected back at them.
A Rumoured Screen-Free Tracker
The emphasis on notifications and metrics connects to another development reported this week. Apple is said to be prototyping a new fitness and health tracker that would not function as a miniature iPhone on the wrist. Instead, it would act as a collection of sensors that hands off data to the iPhone.
The concept has been likened to activity trackers such as those made by Whoop, which gather activity data without a display of their own. Such a device would not present information directly on the wrist, which is precisely the intended design. It could be viewed as a stripped-back Apple Watch, prioritising data collection over on-device alerts.
The existing Apple Watch is well regarded for its data-collection capabilities, though its frequent notifications can prove intrusive, with regular prompts arriving on the wrist. A screen-free alternative would remove that stream of alerts while still capturing health and activity information for review on the iPhone. The reported prototype would collect data on activity and hand it to a paired iPhone rather than surfacing metrics on the wrist itself.
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Image: appleinsider.com
