In early 2024, Apple removed a blood oxygen monitoring feature from its then-current Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches, following a ruling that the feature violated light-based pulse oximetry patents from a California-based company called Masimo. Removing the feature allowed Apple to circumvent an import ban and continue selling the Series 9 and Ultra 2 (and, later, the Series 10) in the US.
Today, Apple announced that it's restoring a version of the blood oxygen monitoring feature to affected Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 watches. Apple says these updates were "enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling."
The feature has been redesigned, presumably to get around the Masimo patents that prompted the import ban in the first place. Apple says that sensor data from your watch will be sent to your iPhone for processing, and you can find the data in the Respiratory section of the Health app on your phone. The old version of the feature allowed results to be viewed directly on the Apple Watch, as shown in Apple's documentation.
The redesigned version of the feature will be available on the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 after users install the watchOS 11.6.1 update on their watches and the iOS 18.6.1 update on their paired iPhones.
Apple says that watches outside the US won't be affected by the update, since they were never subject to the US import ban in the first place. It also won't affect Apple Watches purchased in the US before the import ban went into effect—Apple never removed the feature from watches it had already sold, so if you bought a Series 9 or Ultra 2 watch in the fall of 2023 or if you're still using an older watch with the blood oxygen monitoring feature, the updates won't change anything for you.
Masimo originally sued Apple over the blood oxygen monitoring feature in January of 2020. According to Masimo, Masimo and Apple had initially met in 2013 to talk about a potential partnership or acquisition, but Apple instead poached Masimo's engineers to implement the feature on its own without Masimo's involvement.
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