Apple Watch running the original 1.0 software rather reliably recorded a user’s heart rate every ten minutes. With Watch OS 1.0.1, users noticed that heart rate records were no longer being kept as frequently. This was initially thought to be a bug but Apple has now clarified that this is intended behaviour on its website.
The updated website says that ‘Apple Watch attempts to measure your heart rate every ten minutes, but won’t record it when you are in motion or your arm is moving’. The original version of this feature did not care about arm movement.
This has caused some complaints from users who thought that the original Watch software recorded heart rate without any issues whatsoever and now see the device as losing functionality with the software update.
It is unclear why Apple has made this change in behaviour, arguably a regression in functionality. There has been some speculation that Apple changed this behaviour to conserve battery life but again this has only angered users who did not see any adverse battery drain from the regular every-ten-minute monitoring.
To offer some fix for the problem, users can still start a workout in the Workout app to force continuous heart rate monitoring by the system, which will record heart rate measurements about every ten seconds. The downside to this is that users have to remember to activate this mode explicitly unlike the passive monitoring.
Update: Following some confusion, it’s worth noting that the ‘arm is moving’ does not affect the heart rate detection used by the Workout app. This is because the Workout app uses the green LEDs and photo sensors to detect heart rate, whereas the passive heart rate monitoring uses only infrared sensors. Apple is not letting the infrared sensors record readings if a user’s arm is moving with the latest Apple Watch software update — the behaviour of the continuous heart rate monitoring when using the Workout app remains the same.
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Wow! That is pretty pathetic. I have a very active job so it won’t measure my heart rate because I’m being active? That makes sense! Isn’t that when you want it measuring your heart rate? There should be an option for the user to decide when it measures your heart rate knowing that there will be a trade off in battery life.
I seriously doubt it has anything to do with battery life, and everything to do with accuracy of the reading. The every ten minute monitoring uses the infrared LEDs which are said to be less accurate to begin with.
Maybe I am in the minority but I think “less accurate” readings would be more beneficial than no readings at all. This update has turned the watch into a fancy pedometer.
Hm…what other method does it use besides the infrared LEDs? I thought that’s how it worked.
It uses green, visible light LEDs during workouts or when using the heartrate glance, because they are more accurate, but consume more battery life I believe. It also specifically tells you on the heartrate glance to keep your arm steady for most accurate results, so my assumption that it’s an accuracy thing stems from this.
Serious? Before Apple watch, what kind of heart rate monitor did you wear? Please!
I don’t see why people need heart rate monitor beside exercise section except patients and those are in very small number.
I didn’t wear a heart rate monitor before buying the Apple Watch. This was a feature I was looking forward having. What’s the point of wearing a heart rate monitor (built into the Apple Watch) if it doesn’t work properly?
I actually wore a Nike Fuelband before the Apple Watch which made a guess on your activity based on your arm movement. Now it appears I am wearing a Nike Fuelband with a screen.
I used to own the Withings fitness tracker. You needed to take it off your wrist and hold it against your finger to measure your heart rate. So ridiculous. I love this feature in the Apple Watch
“What’s the point of wearing a heart rate monitor (built into the Apple Watch) if it doesn’t work properly?”
…you seem to missing the point — apple feels having it take inaccurate readings is it not working properly, and having it read only when its sure its accurate *is* working properly.
I have the exact same issue. My watch did not measure my heart rate once yesterday during my 12 hour shift. I had zero problems with battery life before this.
Apple does this because inactive calorie counts and therefore basal metobolic rates depend upon a consistent measure of resting heart rate, and obviously someone is not resting when they are moving their arms. Were apple to measure heart rate during non-workout, but still active, durations, it would skew the resting heart rate estimation upwards and therefore contribute to inaccurate inactive calorie counts. The purpose of the workout app is three fold: to provide discrete periods for after-the-fact user analysis, to to contrast the body’s own biologically distinct energy usage methods when it is cardiovascularly active versus cardiovascularly inactive (the differences are significant) and, finally, to provide the user a breakdown of calorie expenditure into inactive and active calories — a feature I consider indispensable.
The point is, this heart rate adjustment in the watchOS update makes perfect sense because th former method contributed to incorrect total calorie counts. The system already takes into account energy expenditure during active periods NOT measured by a workout (say, when I’m walking to the grocery store) by measuring steps, and any second data input (heart rate monitoring) is not only redundant, it also skews other parts of the energy expenditure algorithm.
This is dumb. I was getting great battery life before, and the every 10 minute frequency recorded a ton of useful data.
Now I’m getting HR readings every hour, 4 hours, or sometimes not even for half a day (I’ll check the HR glance at noon and it will say “yesterday” as the last reading time).
This defeats the purpose of wearing a HR monitor, makes the calorie calculation not much more accurate than a regular pedometer.
The heartbeat glance very frequently shows my last recorded heart rate as being 61bpm, much more often than any other number. Perhaps my heart rate is just that regular, but I also see in the sample data shown here a disproportionate number of 61s. I’m suspicious.
I don’t understand why they changed this. It was working well on 1.0.0 and my battery life was fine.
Apple definitely needs to revert to prior functionality. This has been a huge regression.
Stupid stupid stupid.
wow, relax people. It’s software, you’ll be sure to have a fix sometime soon. If it’s annoying you this much return the watch… if you can’t ebay it, you’ll get more than your money back. As with all new software, there will be growing pains, give the software a break… it has only been out for 35 days! :)
Really, really stupid Apple. Im getting the same battery life performance now as I was before, only now my heart rate is being monitored every hour (at best).
Are you telling me that I have to open the activity app when I am mowing the lawn or gardening or moving boxes or doing housework? So stupid Apple. A lot of daily activities and calories burnt are now not being recorded fully because of this change.
It makes no sense for Apple Watch to sample heart rate unless the Workout App is “on”, or the user is at rest.
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/MyHeartandStrokeNews/All-About-Heart-Rate-Pulse_UCM_438850_Article.jsp
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/PhysicalActivity/FitnessBasics/Target-Heart-Rates_UCM_434341_Article.jsp
Resting heart rate can be a measure of cardiac health. Resting heart rate is also needed to calculate maximal heart rate. When you exercise, you should target 50-85% of your maximal heart rate.
When you mow the lawn or do other household chores, you aren’t increasing your metabolic rate much. Apple Watch can calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) from your age, weight, height, and gender.
Yes it does make sense. So many people have active jobs and lifestyles like myself, they aren’t going to select the workout app every time they are active. For your information my lawn is 100 metres with gradient and no automation on my petrol mower. I spend around 30 minutes speeding around my garden and this gets my heart rate up to 130bpm on occasion. From what you are saying, we need a workout mode for every day activities. This would be ridiculous, we just need the watch to recognise when we are being active and record it more accurately. Every 10 minutes was a good benchmark and there was nothing wrong with it, so no need to fix it.
I don’t like this — I never had any issues at all with battery life.
If people are as annoyed as me about this change please let Apple know here:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html
Let’s change this back
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Okay http://www.apple.com/feedback
So should we also not trust the constant heart rate readings while using the Workout app because our arms may be moving? Super stupid decision.
My thoughts exactly
All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t upgrade to 1.0.1. I thought I was just being lazy but now I’m pretty sure I just assumed there’d be something goofy that’d “be worked out in 1.0.2 or 1.1”.
I’m not especially active, but I end my 16hr days with 50-70% battery life and things seem to work great, so unless they fix my minor issues, I’m not going to upgrade.
No, this doesn’t affect the workout mode at all. Read the post.
Apple watch was made to measure the health parameters. It should be all state whether active or sleeping or running on treadmill. I will wait for apple to give logic behind this feature change.
After repeatedly testing the heart monitor on the Apple Watch (workout app) during powerlifting breaks and finding it way, way off (49 bpm while my pulse was around 130) I completely gave up on the thing. This is very frustrating since it was one of the main reasons I bought the device in the first place.
This is one of the things that changed for the better with 1.0.1
With 1.0 I got this occasional 48bpm too (and I used to have the band quite tight during workout).
With 1.0.1 the 48bpm measurements are gone completely.
Apple is trying to measure your RESTING heart rate. Not your active heart rate, which it would already do if you use the workout app.
By accurately measuring resting heart rate, it can better tell what kind of cardiovascular shape your in. Measuring your heart rate constantly would throw off readings considerably and make it seem like your resting heart rate is way higher than it should be.
Apple’s in the right, and everyone in here who is complaining just doesn’t know what their talking about.
This post is easily the most sensical one. Honestly, I am big into health and fitness and was a bit upset by this lack of every ten minutes measurement.
This however makes absolute perfect sense quite frankly. I didn’t even think of that. Having said that, it would seem if that were the case, then there should be a feature that detects when there is more than normal movement for a duration and then start taking repeated measurements and tally that to exercise and calorie expenditure. That of course would be outside of the using the workout app.
The watch is cabable of distinguishing between rest and active ..
It can do this for calorie count and give yond two seperats burn rates.. Rest and active.
The same can be done for heart beat. Recored it continuously , thr. allow the user to see rest , active, and combined individually .
No need to shut the measurment down when active.. Just mark it as active heart rate.
And mark rest rate as rest heart rate.. And allow the user to focus on what they want .
The resting calorie burn rate isn’t calculated from the heart rate monitoring, it’s calculated with the height, weight, gender, and age input in the health section of the Apple Watch App and Health App. If you open your iPhone’s Activity App and check the resting calorie burn count of multiple days, you will see it is the exact same amount everyday and is predetermined. The Apple Watch never had an ability to distinguish between active and resting heart rate. When it does there would be automatic workout detection as in a few competitor’s devices, but even most require you to input in order to distinguish that you are about to work out.
Continuous heart rate monitoring as it was previously simply gave you an average heart rate for the day or selected time period. It is basically an average of how hard your heart worked and calories burned. It could not give you a meaningful indication that your heart could be weaker or stronger than average based on activity interfering. The resting heart rate is what determines your heart’s level of health, and is the point of the heart monitor. If you wanted to know how many calories were burned, motion sensors that have existed in nearly every device and application beforehand are accurate enough. The heart monitor simply increases the rate of precision, but both methods are accurate.
You just made that up. Like yojimbo007 said, the watch knows the difference between resting and active heartrate. Whatever the reason for the change, it’s definitely not what you said. The watch had the capability previously and it worked well. No need to make excuses.
You don’t know what you’re talking about Justin. You don’t know what Apple is trying to do! You don’t know the Apple algorithm for measuring heart rate data. Stop trying to sound like you do! The facts are this: Apple had a heart rate monitor that monitored our heart rates every 10 mins, it now monitors our heart rates much less frequently. Therefore, any burst of activity not worthy of opening the activity app will not be measured by the heart rate monitor. This reduces the capability of the Apple Watch as a heart rate monitor and a fitness tracker.
Resting calories goes up throughout the day irrespective of active calories. You don’t understand how it works. The ‘resting calories’ goes up no matter what, based on your age, sex, height, and weight. It is an estimate of the calories you’re burning at rest. The watch knows active calories, which is also a very estimated metric. It estimates active calories through the aforementioned stats, along with pace/heartrate/distance, and plugs it into an algorithm created by Apple through their extensive fitness testing, which they believe to be the most accurate estimate for active calories burned.
Stop making excuses. It’s pathetic.
Even while sitting at my desk my watch frequently shows its last heart rate reading an hour or more prior. How still do i have to be?! As is, it simply has a very limited data set.
Completely agree!
It makes no sense for Apple Watch to check HR unless the workout app is on or the user is at rest, and here’s why:
Heart rate is supposed to be checked at rest, unless you are exercising.
When you see your healthcare provider, your HR and blood pressure should optimally be checked after sitting for 3-5 minutes. When exercising, you should target 50-85% of your maximal heart rate.
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/PhysicalActivity/FitnessBasics/Target-Heart-Rates_UCM_434341_Article.jsp
Does not make sense…
There were no battery life issues with the watch..
I go to sleep with 30-40% battery charge left every night.
I wish apple would explain or go back to what it was before !
Why should heart rate not be recorded when one is moving? Apple ???
You’re wearing it wrong.
Wow never heard that one before. How original.
Now I am in doubt whether I should order Apple watch or go with FitBit bands which are way cheaper and works as expected. Or may be Apple can clear their logic behind it.
I would still go with Apple Watch, I’m done with fitness trackers, had so many they don’t last and I’ve put most back in the utility drawer. The quality of the watch is great (despite my issues with software), plus looks good on every occasion because its a watch not plastic.
Cuz you need that right? You doctor you! Tyranny for every human!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple should have had something this elementary sorted right from the start. Not only did Apple totally mess up getting this overpriced luxury nonsense into the hands of their customers (oh, wait you STILL can’t buy this in the stores?), but once a few actually got their hands on it, they’ve decided to mess with it some more.
I’ve been kicking around the idea that my family might have surprised me with one for Fathers Day or something. But with Apple still futzing about, I’ll advise against it. Curious as to how the runners blog will spin this into one more “absolutely fabulous” element to the A-Watch.
#clusterfuck
the original 10 min sampling was designed to monitor your resting heart rate to calculate your resting caloric burn. if you’re active during that time, it’s not a “resting caloric rate,” is it?
this change is in response to that. if you’re moving your arm consistently for over 10 or more minutes, there’s no need to take your heart rate to calculate “resting caloric burn” since you’re likely not at rest. the HR monitor in Apple Watch was never advertised as a heart rate monitoring device and the change was likely implemented due to the widespread advocacy by people of the device’s previously consistent 10 minute sampling, likely to back away to prevent the FDA from stepping in, as an abundance of caution. despite the widely accepted terminology of “HR monitor,” these devices aren’t… they take an HR sampling and aren’t design for all-day monitoring; devices designed for that purpose must be approved by the FDA. hence why the device is now only programmed to consistently sample your HR consistently while in exercise tracking mode to assist in monitoring your active caloric burn rate, as advertised.
if Apple continued with their previous programming, they could have opened themselves up to lawsuits, frivolous or not, by those who may have felt harmed if the Apple Watch did not properly detect and warn them about any heart defects detectable by a simple heart rate monitoring device, no matter how ignorant their assumption may be.
Heart rate initially taken in complete rest. If you are moving then an exercise monitor is needed. Do not confuse everything; with fitness mania.
It’s pathetic to read tons of nonsense.
I asume this is USA style business, and huge quantities of money are in game, so law suits.
Money and Law Suits are in USA synonymous.
Thats ridiculous. I only want to know how high my Pulse is while I’m doing something. The rest Pulse is always the same so therr is no need it mesure it frequetly. I’m a healty Person so there is really bo need for that. Thei promoted the watch with your pulse getting trackt every 10 minutes. And now tyey just take this Feature away?! A no go! They have ti include a Switch or a Slider in order to adjust the Frequency!
Has anyone stopped to think that the bug was the recording of the heart rate every 10 min in wOS 1.0 and 1.0.1 fixed it?
I never saw that advertised and apple will say that that is still true as the watch does try to collect it every ten minutes still. I would imagine this is for accuracy my advice? Make sure you stop moving every ten minutes if it’s that important
*Brilliant* and well done to you! Let me answer that for you:
“No.”
I’ll wager that virtually no one, including the person that wrote this:
“It is unclear why Apple has made this change in behaviour, arguably a regression in functionality. There has been some speculation that Apple changed this behaviour to conserve battery life but again this has only angered users who did not see any adverse battery drain from the regular every-ten-minute monitoring.”
…never actually bothered to consider if or not the previous behavior was errant in the first place :)
-K
So what is the actual benefit in measuring the heart rate outside of a workout? What does the watch do with that information other than just store in the Health app? During a workout, Apple states the heartrate is used to calculate calory burn, but I’m unclear what the intended purpose of measuring the heartrate outside of a workout is. Apple certainly doesn’t say so on their support page. Anyone know?
I would think it’s to check the overall health of the user. It seems to me that Apple is trying to help people(and their doctors) understand their health better by coming out with HealthKit and Apple Watch, which can help you monitor your health. Only recording the resting heart rate could show you any differentiations in your heart rate while resting, and therefore alert you to any problems. I see benefits in both options, but with a HR sample every ten minutes you would simply see a long list of your heart rate going up and down. Maybe Apple is trying to help those people with possible heart problems see if their heart rate varies when it should be the same? That’s what makes sense to me.
My heat rate changes very little throughout the work day – but I do agree ,and if it does save battery by turning this feature off, then that would be a good thing, however, it is a new feature to many and it is an exciting feature, so why not have a switch to turn this feature on or off… I’m sure apple will have a solid explanation and of course make changes by the next update.
I already posted the inside scoop on this last week: http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/22/apple-watch-heart-rate-bug/comment-page-1/#comment-263943. (P.S., there’s extra info there.)