Apple Announces Redesigned Blood Oxygen Feature for U.S. Watch Market

Source: Apple.

Since 2023, Apple has been locked in a dispute with Masimo over patents related to the Apple Watch’s Blood Oxygen feature. That meant for more than 18 months, Apple Watches in the U.S. were sold without Blood Oxygen monitoring.

Today, the company announced that:

Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 users through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming later today.

The update doesn’t affect watches in the U.S. that already had Blood Oxygen feature or watches sold elsewhere in the world.

According to Apple, today’s update was enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling, and:

Following this update, sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app.

It’s good to see the Blood Oxygen feature returning to all Apple Watches, and not just future hardware releases. It will be interesting to see how the redesigned feature, which requires an iPhone, compares to the original feature that is no longer available in new hardware.