Happy Apple week to all who celebrate. We’re just 48 hours away from Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event, where the brand will release all its new products. I’ve been writing about Apple Watch for the past decade, and will be on the ground in Cupertino bringing you all the updates as they drop, but it’s safe to say we can expect a new Apple Watch 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4.
Design-wise, it’s thought that Apple will keep things pretty similar to the Apple Watch 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3, but one big change that could affect the health and fitness tracking on the watch is a new continuous heart rate sensor.
According to MacRumors, Apple has been testing a continuous heart rate sensor that would allow the Apple Watch to track your health and recovery 24/7 via your heart rate, similar to the way the Oura Ring 5 or Whoop 5.0 works.
On current models, the Apple Watch measures your heart rate every few minutes throughout the day, and to save battery life, it only moves to continuous tracking when you manually log a workout. By switching to continuous tracking all day, Apple will be able to give more accurate data, or even build a readiness or wellness score.
A wellness score has always been missing from the Apple Watch, and is one thing that sets other wearables, like Garmin and Fitbit, apart. Sure, all the data is in the Health app, but Apple Watch wearers still can’t see at a glance how well they’ve recovered from a particular workout, or their baseline readiness each morning.
What’s more, continuous Heart Rate Variability (HRV) readings are one of the easiest ways to spot you’re getting sick or run down. Apple’s “Vitals” app, introduced in watchOS 11, was a first step in this direction, but continuous tracking would give Apple higher quality data to match competitors like Oura.
Obviously, the Apple Watch-shaped elephant in the room here is how this continuous heart rate tracking might affect battery life. Apple Watch has notoriously fallen short when it comes to battery life, with the Apple Watch 11 giving 18 hours of battery life, compared to the Oura Ring or Whoop, which last 4- 7 days between charges. How Apple will manage this if they do add continuous heart rate tracking to the Apple Watch remains to be seen. The good news is, we don’t have long to wait to find out.
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