Chinese manufacturer Oppo, which also makes the OnePlus range of Android phones and wearables, looks set to debut a new watch next month, likely to be the OnePlus Watch 3. A promotional image, shared on Weibo by OPPO product manager Zhou Yibao, showcases a cool new feature: blood pressure monitoring, indicating hypertension risk.
Accurate blood pressure monitoring via LEDs remains a “holy grail” health feature for even the best smartwatches, proving frustratingly out of reach. The Huawei Watch D2 is the most accurate so far, including in its technology a strap packed with inflatable bladders, acting as a portable blood pressure cuff.
Rather than wait until the blood pressure monitoring technology gets approval from the US Food & Drug Administation, or a similar governing body (FDA approval is a clear signifier of quality, and clears these features for medical use), it seems as though Oppo will follow the route Apple is expected to take, and use BP readings as an indication that you should get checked out by a medical professional.
This approach has served Apple, and other smartwatch manufacturers, well in the past: the Cupertino giant’s sleep apnoea detection feature it debuted on its Apple Watch Series 10 and watchOS 11 last year also provides an indication to see a medical professional only, rather than a clear diagnosis.
Apple doesn’t usually debut a feature unless it has a pretty good idea that it works: it’ll be interesting to compare this next generation of smartwatch features against a medical-grade blood pressure cuff to determine accuracy.
You might also like...
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.