Now there is a watch which doesn’t need a phone – it contains its own SIM card – Samsung 4G watch
This sounds really good for aviation use, especially for checkrides: 
The stress-tracking feature is more at the forefront than before for the reason that it now automatically detects when you’re too stressed and invites you to carry out breathing exercises to combat your high stress levels.
What do users do about a SIM card for the phone? You cannot share this one; you need a second contract. Well, unless you use the watch as a wifi hotspot for the phone, but then you will hammer the watch battery. Maybe there is a generation of people who can run their entire life with just the watch?
Smartwatches on own mobile networks are still not widespread, but quite a number of them are available. They usually use eSIM, built-in cards, and in most countries are hooked to your phone contract as a MultiSIM (usually phone contracts allow SIM + 2 MultiSIM, i.e. tablet and smartwatch).
Did anyone test the SpO2 smart watches?
He’ll all pilot mates, I just wanted to know if anyone is using such a watch during unpressurized flight around fl100, or just higher with O2 supply. There are more and more references and as I’m flying around these altitudes sometimes and would be pleased to have a control device but no more toy in the bag. Is this accurate???
As a geek, I’m tempted by the withings one, usually they have good health products.
Let’s see what comes out of the Apple trick box on the 15th
I only had a brief look but I see no change in Apple’s Healthkit library, i.e. the only thing which is exposed is the heartbeat() class. Which doesn’t mean that Apple apps won’t be able to have access to SpO2, from a hardware perspective the v4 and v5 of the watch seem perfectly capable.
Garmin and withings doesn’t publish SW kit but they do have O2 sensor on the watch. YouTubers seems to have mixed results on sea level measurements with the Garmin one (95% on the watch versus 98% on medical finger sensor), but a test at 3000m would be worth trying.
In do have the Garmin. I compared the result several times on different flight levels with the results of a medical finger sensor and it was quite accurate.
Hi,
I got a cheapo smartwatch L7 which has O2, Pulse, blood pressure and all sort of stuff as it looked nice and was cheap to give a try.
To my surprise I’ve come to like it a lot. Mine is the version to the right on the pic, silver with brown leather. It does what is advertized and is very practical to wear. I got it primarily for the O2 function and for the step counter, both of which I have crosschecked against a) a finger pulseoximeter I’ve been using for years and which in turn was crosschecked with the one my doc has as well as the oximeter my Samsung phone features, and the stepper with my smartphone. The Oximeter is normally showing the exact same value, maximum deviation from the finger oximeter is 0.3%. The step counter also works fine, as does the pulse sensor. The only one whch I would not use in anger is the blood pressure sensor, even though I am a bad example to test it, as my BP always is pretty much bog standard.
The watch itself is very practical in use, it has a g-sensor which automaticalls displays the timeface if you tilt your arm so as to watch the time, the leather bracelet is much better than I expected for the price and bluetooth functions also work fine. What is very nice is that you can use all functions as well as set the time e.t.c. even when the watch is not paired, I actually have not used the software which comes with it or a while, simply because there is no need. That is a nice difference to the one I got for my wife which only can adapt the time and date e.t.c. while paired. The glass is ok, but I did get a scratch on it recently which means it is not that robust, but for the price it is fine.
In the mean time I’ve seen that there are newer models out, one L11 and some in between, which look the same but have extended functions. Price of both is between $20 to 30 plus shipping. I got mine via Wish. I might order the L11 eventually for the extended functions and better software.
Thanks Peter for the merge, and MD for the watch advise.
Actually I do own a galaxy S9+ and notice that it once had a sensor for this, but samsung has removed it from its app “samsung Health” during 2019 without much explanation. I could anyway download the fitzy+ app that give me accurate results (I did it during my medical visit for french L3 diving aptitude and it gave same result).
I will for sure try it in altitude. Anyway this is a phone and it doesn’t really provide tracking.
greg_mp wrote:
samsung has removed it from its app “samsung Health”
It is still there on my S8, fully re-installed less than a month ago, strange… It gives 100%, at rest, sea level…
