Apple Watch Series 6 capable of monitoring blood oxygen levels?

According to a new report from Digitimes, this new connected watch from Apple should be released later in the year, with an announcement during the annual end-of-year keynote, exceptionally scheduled for the end of September in 2020. To allow the boarding of such technologies in its new accessory, the site's sources affirm that Apple was able to count on the support of the Taiwanese company ASE Technology, responsible for many of the watch's improvements.

Within the beta version of iOS 14, released a few days ago, certain lines of code suggested that the next Watch would come with these sensors. Information which is today confirmed again by several specialists from the company.

Why monitor blood oxygen levels?

Such monitoring will allow the watch to issue notifications whenever a healthy threshold is reached, and oxygen saturation becomes a concern. Too low an oxygen level in the blood is one of the symptoms of several very serious heart and respiratory diseases. Google's Fitbit bracelet already offers this monitoring today.

How does it work in concrete terms?

If the process used by Apple to monitor blood oxygen levels is not yet known, it is possible to analyze that used by Googleinside his Fitbit bracelet. It is in any case very likely that Apple's process is very close, if not identical, to that of Google.

So within the Fitbit bracelet there are several sensors, which allow you to measure your heart rate using small green LEDs most often. Coupled with oximetry, these small lights use photoluminescence to measure the oxygen saturation level in the blood. The oxygen present in the blood reacts to light and creates color variations, once returned to the bracelet, the latter calculates the phase shift between the original color and that of return, from this information it is able to deduce the oxygen saturation level in the blood.

If no official announcement is to be expected from Cupertino before the keynote, the Apple Watch Series 6 should therefore include this technology.