Smartwatch

The company’s fitness watches are unmatched in longevity, value over time, and their ability to track all the performance minutia athletes want to track. But Garmin Connect — which ties everything together — well... sucks, which was made all the more obvious after Apple started playing on Garmin’s turf. The new Connect app and website is currently beta-only for select customers, but is coming to everyone “later this year.”

In the age of planned obsolescence, Strava’s annual Year in Sport Trend report has uncovered a surprising factoid: The most popular smartwatch among its users worldwide is the Garmin Forerunner 235 — a device that launched waaaaay back in 2015.

On Monday evening, Bloomberg reported the work on algorithm changes that it could submit to the US customs agency in hopes they’ll be approved to get the devices back on the market, plus a few other details about Apple’s response to the ban.

This is not a drill. Back in 2021, Mobvoi was listed among the few companies whose Wear OS 2 devices would get the upgrade to Wear OS 3. And then Mobvoi users had to wait. And wait. And wait some more. But the company just sent out an email with guidance for a forthcoming Wear OS 3 release.

As part of its ongoing partnership with (Red) — a brand dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS — Apple has released an all-red version of the Apple Watch Series 9, alongside some exclusive watch faces to mark World AIDS Day.

In a blog post, Google detailed the Messages improvements, some nice Wear OS and accessibility updates, and more. With Wear OS, for example, you’ll soon be able to set home or away statuses in Google Home, which could be handy if you forget to change your status when you leave the house.

watchOS 10 brought a lot of change to the Apple Watch interface. One casualty was swiping to switch watchfaces — a move that I’ve seen lots of folks bemoan on social media. Well, good news. The watchOS 10.2 dev and public betas are bringing it back as an option that you can toggle on or off. Everybody wins!

Bloomberg has a sprawling report out today on the ups and downs of Apple’s health tech ambitions. One tidbit that caught my eye was the how the first Apple Watch was meant to include noninvasive blood glucose monitoring and blood pressure... but ultimately didn’t. I wrote a whole thing about why this is such a Herculean task, which you can read below. But the gist wearable makers have to toe a fine line between medical device and wellness gadget and Apple has been no exception.

On Thursday, the US International Trade Commission found that Apple violated a patent held by medical tech company Masimo related to measuring blood-oxygen levels.

If you’ve been annoyed by watchOS 10’s penchant for blank weather complications... good news. Apple says that updating to the watchOS 10.1 public release will fix that issue and has published a support document on the issue. If updating doesn’t work, the document also gives you some troubleshooting instructions.

That’s according to a memo shared with Apple Authorized Service Providers reported on by MacRumors. The memo doesn’t say which watches this is an issue with, but users have reported flickering problems with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Apple Watch Series 9.

The ECG App is now available for Epix Pro series, Fenix 7 Pro series, Venu 3 series, and Tactix 7 watches to record heart rhythm and check for signs of AFib. The app lets you perform a 30-second electrocardiogram (ECG, or EKG if you prefer its Germanic origins) and view the results immediately. As usual, DesFit has all the details on his YouTube channel.

The new Pixel Watch 2 charges faster than the original, but after a new firmware update, it now charges much, much faster. Google says the original Pixel Watch will now take 45 minutes to reach 50 percent instead of 30, and 75 minutes to reach 80 percent. You can expect a full charge to take 110 minutes.