There’s some good news for Apple Watch users in the US who miss the blood oxygen monitoring function. As per recent developments, there is a chance for its return, though the timeline is quite uncertain – and possibly very long.

Apple is trying to appeal the ban, which may result in a sooner reinstatement

Remember when Apple was sued by Masimo for infringing the pulse oximetry technology used to measure blood oxygen levels? This decision affected the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Documents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicate Apple can potentially resume selling Apple Watches with the blood oxygen feature by August 2028 at the latest. This coincides with the expiration of the patent Apple was found to have infringed upon.

However, this isn’t the only factor at play. Apple is actively appealing the ban imposed by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). If their appeal is successful, the blood oxygen functionality could return sooner than August 2028.

The whole situation is further complicated by the lack of a settlement between Apple and Masimo, the patent holder. As of now, a licensing agreement seems unlikely. Reports state that Masimo’s CEO remains open to discussion but hasn’t engaged with Apple yet.

That’s not all. Masimo is raising concerns that Apple might enable the blood oxygen function on jailbroken iPhones through software updates. They’re advocating for stricter restrictions, ideally at the hardware level, to prevent this possibility. This fiasco might end up costing Apple billions of dollars since Apple Watches are some of its most popular products next to the iPhones and Macs. We’ll find out soon if Apple can bring blood-oxygen-measuring Apple Watches back to the market, but for now, all we can do is wait. Stay tuned for future coverage on the same!

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(Via)

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Nearly a year after announcing the brand’s first smartwatch, Redmi released the Redmi Watch 2 in China last week. When compared to its predecessor, the watch comes with key upgrades in the design, display, and features department, making it an attractive option for ¥399 ($62) in the home market.

As usual, we got our hands on the new Redmi Watch 2 this week, and here are our first impressions.

A Larger and Better Display

One of the biggest upgrades on the new Redmi Watch 2 is its display. The brand has given it a 1.6-inch OLED display, which means you get more screen real estate with better colors. To recall, the original Redmi Watch had a 1.4-inch LCD display.

The screen-to-body ratio has improved to 63.7%, and the overall design feels a bit more refined than its predecessor. The watch only weighs 31 grams, so it’s on the lighter side, and you’ll be comfortable wearing it for the entire day. The silicone rubber strap is comfortable and features a quick-release design, so you can easily replace it.

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The watch supports touch inputs and there’s a single button on the right for navigation.

Redmi Watch 2 comes with More Features

The new Redmi Watch 2 features over 117 workout modes, with the ability to automatically detect some of them.

The watch also supports all-day heart rate monitoring as well SpO2 blood oxygen monitoring. The latter is a new and welcome addition to the watch, enabling you to keep a track of your blood oxygen levels. The watch will take around a minute to check your oxygen levels.

There are other features too like sleep detection, stress detection, sleep status and quality monitoring, and sedentary reminders like other fitness wearables in the market.

The new watch is 5ATM waterproof like its predecessor, so you can even wear it while swimming. Finally, it also comes with a multi-functional NFC, which will come in handy for payments.

Redmi Watch 2 offers a Week’s Battery Life

The Redmi Watch 2 still comes with a magnetic charging design. The official standby claim is 12 days, and you’ll get around a week’s usage on a single charge. We are yet to check this claim in our tests, but we’ll share more details in our full Redmi Watch 2 review that’ll come out soon.

Overall, the Redmi Watch 2 is an excellent upgrade to the original Redmi Watch, featuring better features, and a more colorful display without a significant increase in its price tag.

You can currently order the Redmi Watch 2 via stores like Giztop outside of China.

To remind you, we are giving away a unit of the Redmi Note 11 Pro (review here) to one of our lucky readers, so make sure to participate in it via the link below.

Giveaway: Win A Redmi Note 11 Pro Phone

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Speaking of smart wearables, the smart band is definitely the most popular category in terms of its rich fitness-tracking features and great value for money. 

For years, HUAWEI wasn’t probably the first brand name that came into your mind for smart wearables. However, this year, you must seriously consider its latest fitness tracker first, the HUAWEI Band 6. 

Huawei Band 6 Review: Design

In the past few years, we have stopped expecting fancy designs on a smart band product. A simple display with smart features was often enough.

But take a look at the HUAWEI Band 6. It’s interesting that Huawei has revamped the design of the Band 6. Its 1.47-inch AMOLED rectangular display makes it stand out from the competition. This display can almost catch up to the display on the Huawei Watch Fit.  

Compared to another hot smart band, the Mi Band 6, this display form factor is better to show content with reasonable interface layouts. And more importantly, the thinner dial (10.99mm) allows the band to fit to my wrist skin better, which greatly reduces the discomfort I feel when wearing bands for a long time and even sleeping with it. 

The skin-friendly silicone strap is removable. Huawei officially offers the changeable straps in 4 colors (Black, Orange, Green, and Pink). 

Huawei Band 6 Review: Fitness & Health features

It’s obvious that HUAWEI has made great efforts to improve its health-centric products this year. As HUAWEI’s entry-level fitness tracker, the HUAWEI Band 6 is able to track all the basic health data that you can have on a basic wrist wearable, including step count, all-day heart rate, all-day SpO², caloric burn, all-day stress, sleep, and so on. It also supports 96 workout modes, which is quite rare in this price range, although out of the 96, only 85 modes support basic tracking. With the support of Huawei’s professional sports algorithms, the other 11 modes are much detailed and professional in fitness tracking. Under the 11 modes, in addition to basic activity tracking, users can check their maximum oxygen uptake, recovery time, and training stress. 

For example, when tracking a run the band will give you accurate route, pace frequency and length, training stress, recovery time, and more. And all these data will immediately be sync to the connected smartphone, which is even more detailed, and the app can accordingly generate a short video of the dynamic route on the map.  

Besides all-day heart rate tracking, the Huawei Band 6 supports all-day blood oxygen monitoring too, which is not available even on the Mi Band 6. And the all-day blood oxygen monitoring can work well with its professional sleep monitoring, and give users more accurate records and advice for improving sleep quality. In our experience, Huawei’s TruSleep technology was more accurate and detailed in sleep tracking, and the results seem to be better than the Mi Band’s. Actually, it’s rare that a budget tracker can track blood oxygen all day. 

Huawei Band 6 Review: Software

About the band’s software support, the Huawei Health app is one of the most detailed and functional fitness tracking APPs that we’ve seen on the Android platform. But the app in iOS is not as well-optimized as on Android. For example, camera remote control is not available on iOS, and neither is the music control feature. But if you are using an Android phone, especially a Huawei phone, the software support is quite satisfying. Or you can also connect Huawei Health to Google Fit and check all the health data in the Google app. But it seems that the HUAWEI Band 6 doesn’t support the connection with other health Apps. 

Most notably, the software of the band itself is quite simple, which means it doesn’t support the installation of third-party apps. But on the other hand, the lightweight software also leads to a smooth touch response. During oue 10-day use, the band rarely lagged or confused me with its software.

The Band supports 5ATM waterproof rating, which means that it can be used for shallow-water activities such as normal swimming. But it is not suitable for underwater activities like diving. 

Huawei Band 6 Review: Battery Life

As for its battery life, considering that we turned on almost all tracking features, I have no complaints about it since I charged it once around 10 days ago. And it still has 13% of power left. As estimated, it’s quite safe to wear it for around 10 days in a heavy use routine without charging it. 

Considering the HUAWEI Band 6 is a well-functional, inexpensive fitness tracker, by far it is at the top of our recommended list. If you are simply looking for a reliable budget health tracker with good software experience, the Huawei Band 6 is really a safe option for you in 2021.

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The post Huawei Band 6 Review: An excellent Smart Band with Spo2 tracking appeared first on Gizmochina.

Honor had an official event in China earlier today where it announced the new Honor 9X series. Alongside the new models, the company also unveiled its brand new wearable, the Honor Band 5, which directly takes on Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4. While the new Honor band goes neck to neck with the Mi Band 4 in terms of features, it has an edge thanks to its blood oxygen level sensor.

The Honor Band 5 comes with a 0.95-inch AMOLED color display with 282 PPI and 2.5D glass on top. The band features a number of new dials to match the different needs of the user. What’s really the highlight of the new smart band is the blood oxygen level sensor. It can measure your blood SpO2 levels, indicating the level of oxygen in your blood. This is a game-changing feature for a smart band that costs less than $30, clearly giving it an edge over Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4.

Other features are standard, including a 24 x 7 heart rate monitoring sensor, sleep monitor with the ability to detect six different types of sleeping problems, and 10 different sports modes that include indoor and outdoor running, cycling, swimming, and a few other cardio activities. Just like the Mi Band 4, the Honor band is waterproof up to 50 meters, so you can wear the wearable while swimming to track your calories.

The Honor Band 5 has two versions, a standard one and an NFC-enabled one. Features usually found on other smart bands like remote camera capture, smart reminders, find your phone, etc are also available on the wearable. The smart band can keep these features running for a good 14 days. That’s less than what Mi Band 4 offers but with a SpO2 sensor on board, it feels like decent battery life.

The Honor Band 5 starts at 189 Yuan ($28) for the standard version and goes up to 219 Yuan ($31) for the NFC version. The standard version will be up for sale in China later today while the NFC version goes on sale on July 29 on Vmall and other online retailers. The band will be made available in three colors, black, blue, and light pink.

UP NEXT: Honor MagicBook Pro launched; features 16.1-inch FHD full-screen display and 8th-gen Intel processor

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Surprisingly, ZUK Z2 Pro turned out to be a pretty powerful handset. Last year’s Z1 was not a powerhouse, instead the company offered great performance at an affordable price tag. With the Z2 Pro, the strategy is a bit different, with ZUK trying to incorporate as many high-end features inside the device as possible. In fact, in our launch article, we had mentioned that the Z2 Pro boasts of being first in a number of features.

For example, it is the first phone with a full 3D mirror body design. The phone is also the first one to feature a front camera that can detect the heart rate of a person. There are a lot more features that can be considered as cool for a flagship smartphone of 2016, so let’s look at the top key features of the new ZUK Z2 Pro flagship smartphone.

1. The ZUK Z2 Pro is the first smartphone to use a full 3D Mirror glass body. You can check out some of the pictures from above to see what is meant by this design.
2. The flagship phone boasts of being the first one that comes with a heart rate monitor on the front camera. So, when you are taking selfies, it can display your heart rate besides the photo. Depending upon the situation and the person you are with, the heart rate will change. The company had shown this feature during the announcement event.
3. ZUK claims the Z2 Pro is the first smartphone to actually come with a fingerprint sensor that will work even with wet hands. So, if you want to use the phone besides a pool or after a workout, the phone will be ready for you. The sensor unlocks in 0.1 seconds.
4. Now, coming to an interesting feature. The phone boasts of being the first one with over 10 professional sensors inside. Here’s the entire list of the sensors found inside the flagship: gravity sensor, 3-axis gyroscope, three-axis magnetic sensor, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, heart rate, blood oxygen sensor, a pressure sensor, ultraviolet sensors, and Hall effect sensor.
5. The new flagship also boasts of being the first phone to fully utilize the power of the Snadpragon 820 chipset. With the help of optimizations, the company claims that it could utilize 100% power from the quad-core chipset, which helps it score nearly 145K on the AnTuTu benchmarking app.
6. You can easily sync the data on your Z2 Pro onto the iCloud. So, if you ever have to restore the contents on your device, just restore it directly from the cloud.

So, that was all the important features of the newly announced ZUK Z2 Pro. Just when we thought that the Le Max 2 with its 6GB RAM and Snapdragon 820 chipset was going to rule the market for some time, the Z2 Pro has arrived. It would be interesting to see how these two phones compare against each other. You can read more about the specs of the device from here.

A ZUK Z2 Pro vs Le Max 2 comparison article is coming your way as we speak, so stay tuned!

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