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Blood Oxygen Active Again On Watch Series 10 After Update

BigBlur said:
This is an interesting bug. Supposedly, the workaround for the ban is that the watch would send the data to the phone, and the phone would do the calculations. But since no phone is involved here, I wonder if the phone is even doing the calculations for the rest of us. What if the calculations are still being done on the watch and only the result is sent to the phone to be displayed. That would be crazy and still be violating the patent.

If you haven't already, do you feel daring enough to restart your watch and iPhone to see if it still behaves this way after a reboot?


I'm not who you asked, but I have a S7 and S10 paired to my iPhone. The S7 does not require an iPhone to see the blood oxygen level; the S10 does. Everything is on the latest version of OS 26.
Click to expand...
So not even a combination of a pre-January 2024 Apple Watch and one made after would count to this aspect of this case.

I agree with you that the blood oxygen level is still being tracked by the watch, but it’s not displayed on the watch itself. It seems like Apple is still using the sensor on the watch to keep track of it, but to hide it on the lw/a watch from viewing so it assumes the iPhone takes responsibility for the majority of it
 
goldmac2006 said:
Had you had a pre-series 9 watch, such as an apple watch series 6, 7 8 or 1st generation ultra paired with your iPhone before your series 10 or simultaneously with it?

Those watches had blood oxygen before the ban. This also includes launch day series 9s and ultra 2s before January 2024 at date of manufacture.
Click to expand...

Nope. This is my first Apple Watch.

BigBlur said:
This is an interesting bug. Supposedly, the workaround for the ban is that the watch would send the data to the phone, and the phone would do the calculations. But since no phone is involved here, I wonder if the phone is even doing the calculations for the rest of us. What if the calculations are still being done on the watch and only the result is sent to the phone to be displayed. That would be crazy and still be violating the patent.

If you haven't already, do you feel daring enough to restart your watch and iPhone to see if it still behaves this way after a reboot?


I'm not who you asked, but I have a S7 and S10 paired to my iPhone. The S7 does not require an iPhone to see the blood oxygen level; the S10 does. Everything is on the latest version of OS 26.
Click to expand...

I went ahead and took the chance and did a full restart of my iPhone and Watch. I will report that after the restart via choosing to power them down not like a hard restart that the Blood Oxygen is still working a-ok.
 
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Another data point: I have a US Watch 10 (11.6.2) and iPhone 12PM (18.6.2) and can take and now see blood ox results directly on the Watch.

incoming-61436C9A-298A-4961-922B-4B9B5B3576E1.png

IMG_3840.jpeg
 
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spartan1967 said:
After looking at my S10 build number which is similar to the OPs, I can also confirm blood O2 results are now visible directly on the watch after updating.

Funny thing is I bought this S10 soon after the S11 was released.
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watchOS and iOS versions please
 
Update: Just installed Watch OS 11.6.2 on my partner's S10 & took an O2 reading. O2 % result was right on the watch with no need to look at iPhone. The only difference with theirs was they are on 18.7.2 (not a beta tester & last public version available for iOS 18) & their S10 was purchased 8 months before the S11 was released.
 
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spartan1967 said:
Update: Just installed Watch OS 11.6.2 on my partner's S10 & took an O2 reading. O2 % result was right on the watch with no need to look at iPhone. The only difference with theirs was they are on 18.7.2 (not a beta tester & last public version available for iOS 18) & their S10 was purchased 8 months before the S11 was released.
Click to expand...
So, your point is that only the watchOS version matters when it comes to displaying blood oxygen levels on LW/A models without looking at the iPhone. Thanks for the update.

It’s also worth noting that if the iPhone is running 26 but the watch is on watchOS 11.6.2 on a non-blood oxygen capable watch, then the watch can still perform blood oxygen measurement the ‘old way’ on those LW/A series 9-10s. However, this won’t work for Apple Watch series 11s because they run watchOS 26 already out of the box.
 
goldmac2006 said:
So, your point is that only the watchOS version matters when it comes to displaying blood oxygen levels on LW/A models without looking at the iPhone. Thanks for the update.

It’s also worth noting that if the iPhone is running 26 but the watch is on watchOS 11.6.2 on a non-blood oxygen capable watch, then the watch can still perform blood oxygen measurement the ‘old way’ on those LW/A series 9-10s. However, this won’t work for Apple Watch series 11s because they run watchOS 26 already out of the box.
Click to expand...
No point. Just providing data to interested parties. Also, if one is on iOS 26, 11.6.2 will not work with the iPhone after another iOS 26 update or an update soon after that.
 
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spartan1967 said:
No point. Just providing data to interested parties. Also, if one is on iOS 26, 11.6.2 will not work with the iPhone after another iOS 26 update or an update soon after that.
Click to expand...
So the iPhone must stay on iOS 18 then ? Because the Apple Watch can stay in an older version of watchOS than the iPhone’s version of iOS but not vice versa
 
I got my Series 10 Watch after they disabled the blood oxygen on the device itself and am also now recently seeing the % on the watch itself. If my memory serves correctly it was not doing this in January when I was sick and checking it more often so it was probably enabled (whether on purpose or not) in watchOS 11.6.2, released in Feburary. Providing more details for anyone else interested.

iOS 18.7.2
iPhone 16e

watchOS 11.6.2
Series 10 GPS 42mm, model MWWA3LW/A
 
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spartan1967 said:
Eventually most of the features of the watch will not work when a future iOS 26 update occurs if the watch is on 11.6.2.
Click to expand...
True. Because it’ll require the watch to update if the iPhone is already on 26 right ?
Slix said:
I got my Series 10 Watch after they disabled the blood oxygen on the device itself and am also now recently seeing the % on the watch itself. If my memory serves correctly it was not doing this in January when I was sick and checking it more often so it was probably enabled (whether on purpose or not) in watchOS 11.6.2, released in Feburary. Providing more details for anyone else interested.

iOS 18.7.2
iPhone 16e

watchOS 11.6.2
Series 10 GPS 42mm, model MWWA3LW/A
Click to expand...
That matches the OP’s information.


spartan1967 said:
Very interesting. So I am thinking Apple might have found a loophole where they are only allowed to put the O2 % results on watches with software they no longer support?
Click to expand...
I don’t know how long this bug lasted; especially since the watchOS 11 beta thread no other wearer mentioned something like that so I’ll probably ask around if they experienced it too
 
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