Tong Family

Well, I’ve been delaying getting a new watch for a relatively long time. We started with a Series 1 and got them for the kids. But the short battery life and not needing notifications plus hoe slow it was was a limitation.

The new focus on Health has changed that plus having cellular as a backup. So I’ve had a Series 3 for a while. Yes it’s ugly but it’s nice to have the backup on runs etc. Battery life is still not great.

That plus I’ve been waiting for a redesign which is rumored for 2021. But now as Apple Health has gotten good I’m wondering. Here are some of the small but useful things that don’t get much attention.

1. Stair descent. Only with series 5 and above.
2. UV index. Measures in real time only with series 5
3. EKG. Only with series 4 although you do have to enable manually
4. Blood Oxygen. Only with Series 6
5. Noise. Measures ambient noise on Series 4 abs SE.
6. Hand washing detection
7. Double support time. Seems like it

Seems like with all these new features picking up a watch on sale isn’t crazy or waiting until the series 7 coming this fall 🙂

Finally for some reason my Apple Watch series 3 no longer does VO2 max worked fine up to April last year I need to reinstall which is a common problem

The solution seems to be a bunch of voodoo but I’ll try them all:

1. The watch doesn’t appear as a data source fir vo2 Max. I have a zillion watches because every reset generates a new data source with an identical name. So one tip is to change your watch name to something unique so you can se what it’s syncing. For me this is how I saw some categories no longer sync.
2. It heeds a FLAT 20 minute outdoor walk or run. Biking or hikes don’t work.
3. Your watch has to be tight so it is recording heart rate regularly.
4. Make sure in the workout app that power saving is off

Now comes the voodoo. False correlation part of it:

1. Put the watch in airplane mode
2. Reset the fitness calibration
3. Reset the watch
4. Add a manual vo2 max to the app.

Wish me luck I’ll try all of them but it sure looks like more of a software issue as all the reading were fine before and it should show at least as a data source. So for grins I went thru every health category to look fir changes and see where the watch is no longer listed:

1. Cycling. But I’ve never recorded so I think data source really means has every recorded not could record for phones.
2. Walking double support time. Ok my with phones only so maybe this is also series 4 or later.
3. Net, net it looks like for watches it only appears if data is there. But for apps this means they have permission to write.

Confusing. Anyway I went on a 20 minute walk in airplane mode and nothing appears oh well!