While Google has been working on its smartwatch operating system for several years, the company only released its first smartwatch in October 2022. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about the Pixel Watch, including the lack of certain health features available in older offerings, such as the 2020 Fitbit Versa 3. One of those attributes is SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) monitoring. However, Google may have finally enabled this particular functionality, at least for one lucky user.
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Reddit user triforce28 spotted a special oxygen saturation map on his Pixel Watch, which was reportedly found when scrolling to the bottom of the feed in the Fitbit Today app. Here, users see a brief overview, including the oxygen saturation percentage of their last sleep session. Tapping this card takes you to another page that provides additional details about the data collected and further context on SpO2 monitoring.
Source: triforce28 – Reddit
The Pixel Watch has the necessary hardware to support SpO2 measurements, but it is not enabled. But we’re excited that this new discovery is changing that, finally giving wearers a novel way to measure sleep quality on Google’s flagship smartwatch.
However, there are still some unknowns. Google hasn’t announced any official plans for rolling out this feature, although its appearance, even on a limited number of wearables, is a strong indicator of wider adoption. We assume detailed stats would also be available on the Health Metrics tab of the Fitbit app for smartphones, although 9to5Google hasn’t been able to find support for tracking blood oxygen saturation there yet.
Google recently released the Pixel Watch June update, but the SpO2 monitoring feature doesn’t appear to be a part of it. Instead, the update contained mostly the usual series of “bug fixes and improvements”. So it’s likely that the addition of SpO2 monitoring is a server-side change, which the company is currently testing on a limited basis.
Google Pixel Watch
The Google Pixel Watch was finally available after a long wait in October last year. While it lacked features like SpO2 monitoring at launch, that is set to change in a future update, making this smartwatch one of the best smartwatches you can get today.
