And other stories from the week gone by
You made it another week following the wild and wacky rollercoaster of wearable technology — our hat goes off of to you.
But while there’s been plenty to get excited about this week — including our first impressions with Oculus Go, our review of Waverly Labs’ Pilot and all the action at Baselworld 2018 — here at And finally we’re rounding up some of the smaller stories from the week.
For all the news, head over to our dedicated section. For everything else, read on below.
Study shows Apple Watch’s heart smarts
We’ve known for some time that the future of the Apple Watch will involve detecting and diagnosing medical conditions through the use of its heart rate monitor, and the smartwatch has been given further backing from an independent study.
Co-ordinated by the University of California, San Francisco, the study engaged 9,750 volunteers, of which, 347 participants said they had already been diagnosed with this medical condition. Researchers then gathered 139 million heart-rate measurements taken by light-based heart monitoring, finding that, with the help of its neural network, the Watch was able to accurately detect a-fib with 97% accuracy in 51 patients undergoing treatment at the university.
Guide: Everything to know about the Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor
We know this isn’t the end of the story, of course. Apple is said to be building an ECG monitor into its next Apple Watch, which would provide medical-grade detection. And it’s perhaps something that’s needed before this kind of technology takes the next step, since the Watch proved less accurate for those who self-reported having atrial fibrillation – finding that just 72% of them had the condition.
Apple GymKit continues expansion
GymKit-enabled machines have slowly been making their way in to gyms across the globe since the end of 2017, and this week both Technogym and Life Fitness provided updates regarding their respective rollouts.
The latter announced it’s preparing a global deployment of equipment, partnering with Pure Fitness in Hong Kong and Anytime Fitness in Japan to become the first to bring enabled machines to each territory.
Read this: We test out Apple GymKit
Technogym, meanwhile, noted that it has rolled out around 5,000 GymKit-enabled machines since November.
Tooth wearable tracks your food and drink
Researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering have developed a sensor that sits on the tooth and helps keep track of the wearer’s food and drink intake.
The 2mm wearable, shown above, is able to pick up on the levels of glucose, salt and alcohol the user has consumed, with individual elements able to send different radio signals to a corresponding app. Using this info, the app is then able to work out the vitamins and nutrients the user is taking in, and therefore provide a fuller picture of the person’s health.
We’ve long lamented the current state of food and drink tracking, so here’s hoping this solution, and others like it, are able to develop and make their way from the lab to the to market sooner rather than later.
Apple’s SOS alert running into trouble
You know when you hold down the Digital Crown and side button on the Apple Watch and it triggers a screen asking you to swipe for an emergency SOS call? Well, it turns out that there’s plenty of users who are accidentally making calls to the police while using the smartwatch as a sleep tracker.
As The Verge reports, one Watch user, Alex Rowley, ended up with police in his bedroom after unwittingly holding down the Digital Crown and making an emergency call during the night. Rowley told The Verge the police were friendly and helpful, and accustomed to WatchOS misdials like this one. A quick search through Twitter shows that there’s plenty more incidents involving accidental activation.
Essential reading: The best Apple Watch apps for sleep tracking
Introduced in watchOS 4, Emergency SOS is potentially life-saving when used correctly. However, you may want to turn the feature off if you use the Apple Watch as your sleep tracker.