Comment by zdw
2 days ago
Note that this isn't the Blood Oxygen sensor (Masimo being the other party in that case), which is still stuck in court.
2 days ago
Note that this isn't the Blood Oxygen sensor (Masimo being the other party in that case), which is still stuck in court.
The blood oxygen sensor does work outside the US
Wow! Really - this is the one patent-restricted feature I was hoping they were going to solve. I'm curious if a decent quality blood oxygen meter could give me additional data about my sleep apnea. I've previously trief several blood oxygen meters ordered from Amazon, and the results were very low accuracy and low confidence, and the only decent ones couldn't log data continuously over time. (At least not when I bought a few different ones a handful of years ago)
Oura gives an averaged overnight blood oxygen reading, and gives insight into breathing regularity and any disturbances that it caught.
https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/7328398760851...
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Perhaps you could try a Garmin watch or activity band? Afaict they don't have the same geo restriction. They're less smart as smart watches go, but in return they have better battery life
I have an amazfit bip 2 or 3 and iirc I can enable spo2 monitoring "constantly" I don't because mine is always 99 so I shut it off and just test manually.
It tracks movement and breathing during sleep. I think it now tracks snoring too, wakeups, rem/deep sleep times, and steps, heart rate, and stress levels.
The app is called zepp and I don't know if any of this is exportable but I only care about a cheap watch that has heartrate on it.
Pretty much any modern Garmin will do that really well.
Did you try the ones from https://getwellue.com/? In my informal testing against “medical-grade” SPO2 monitors they were accurate and they record all night long.
I'm in the US and I totally forgot about the blood oxygen patent fiasco. I have an Apple Watch Series 8 and it continues to work. Maybe it's only newer models that are affected?
(Aha, this article says it's Series 9 and Ultra 2 that are affected: <https://www.tomsguide.com/wellness/smartwatches/apple-wins-p...>.)
Mine doesn't seem to. I have a US Apple Watch that I use outside the US all the time. Non-US account/app store too.
I was reading it is based on the part numbers and it is a different number for US bought watches.
If number ends with LW/A you will not have it
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120359
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My understanding is it's like iPhone purchased in Japan always having the shutter noise no matter where they're taking a picture.
Apple Watches purchased and activated in USA after the patent lawsuit cut off date won't have the feature enabled, even if you travel or move.
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Blocked by the International Trade Commission from being imported which is why watches prior to block still work. Patent case ended up in a hung jury trial with all but 1 juror siding with Apple.