Soli

bruce ketchum said:

GeorgeBMac said:

danvdr said:

Seems to me that blood oxygen will largely be a cool party trick. A) Unless you are quite sick, your O2 is normal. If you are quite sick and aren't getting enough O2 your body detects it and you feel short of breath and start breathing faster/harder. The O2 sensor gives you a number; whether you head to the doctor or not will depend on how you feel.

Now, if they could get an accurate blood glucose (i.e. blood sugar) monitor, I think that will be a game changer. (But that one is likely a ways off.)

An SpO2 sensor could, I suspect, be useful for endurance athletes.   It is a well accepted fact that high end endurance athletes (runners, cyclists, etc.) are rated on their VO2Max (the body's ability to take in and use Oxygen).  So, providing real time blood levels of oxygen during an event could provide additional useful data to those athletes over and above heart rate.

For myself, when I race, I look at heart rate most of all in order to pace myself by allowing it to climb from 80% of max up to 95-100% in a controlled manner.   I suspect that blood oxygen levels might be very useful to know in order to better pace myself during an event -- telling me how well my heart and lungs are supplying oxygen to my muscles.

In healthy people, arterial blood oxygen levels don't increase or decrease during physical activity. You might see a slight, momentary drop during a so-called supramaximal effort, but largely no change. Increased O2 delivery to active muscles is accomplished by increasing respiratory rate and increasing cardiac output (stroke volume x heart rate). Unless you have a disease or disorder, a single hemoglobin protein molecule picks up and drops off four oxygen molecules at the same rate always, no matter what state of activity you're in.

This study indicate that oxygen saturation does indeed decrease as you reach maximum heart rate. This study was done with athletes and nothing indicates that it was a momentary drop.

• https://www.stahq.org/files/1813/5845/7616/18_Lain2_Abstract.pdf

Beats said:

Soli said:

Beats said:

chasm said:

Phobos7 said:

True Depth was the better choice.

Truedepth isn't really needed for things like measuring the depth of a room, so why add (probably considerable) cost to something that doesn't need a finely-detailed 3D map? Tables and walls and furniture just aren't as complex as faces. Take a look at the Apple Maps "look around" to see a demonstration of more complex LiDAR.

So he's correct. If Truedepth is indeed better than we can be sure it will be added to later models as it compliments AR.

Maybe not. TrueDepth might be better for details when looking at a predisposed object that it's expecting to verify with a map and at a close, predetermined range expectation (well within an arm's length), compared to another use of lidar* that is designed for mapping countless objects in significantly larger area (a room). Kind of like having a macro lens for taking a picture of a mountain range and then arguing that that macro lens is better because it can get higher detail of a specific object.


* I keep seeing LiDAR spelled this way. Just stick with lidar like we have for radar, laser and the uncommon maser (even though it predates laser and follows its pattern).

Probably because the lower case "i" has been all the rage since the early 2000s. I still cringe when I see knockoffs use it though.

It's not an Apple thing. It's because the 'i' isn't it's own word, but part of the word light, just as you could've once found RaDAR as it uses the 'a' from the word Radio along with d(etection) a(nd) r(anging), for both acronyms.

I'm still unsure what's stopping Apple from making their lidar system more accurate or Truedepth have wider range.

Why are you assuming Apple is "stopping"? Clearly their years of work with lidar is being applied to devics to make them better, faster, and more accurate with every iteration. Because they didn't call it TrueDepth and it doesn't have the exact same feature set as lidar being used with other sensors for a very specific use case on the front of the camera? You don't want the system on the back to work for Face ID and you don't want Face ID to map a room. That should be clear.

Mgwl said:

seanismorris said:

I read in a review on the Samsung watch the battery life is up to 48 hours.  But, using LTE it lasted 3 hours...

Soli said:

Where are you seeing 3 hours of battery life on LTE? I'm guessing that it's 3 hours of life on LTE when on a phone call, but just being a connected and doing normal stuff should get you about a day. Tom Guide's says, "Samsung says the LTE version lasts about 24 to 36 hours on a charge, depending on which size watch you buy, but I didn’t get a chance to test an LTE model." That's what you expect from your always on iPhone compared to actual phone call time with your iPhone.

I’d say about a day’s battery life is quite right. I regularly go to the office (well, not in these days of the coronavirus, I’m not) with only an Apple Watch on my wrist and the iPhone shelved back home. Including my commute, that’s about 12 hours on LTE with 5-10 minutes of phone calls, a handful of messages, some notifications and checking emails a couple of times during the day. If I don’t overuse it, the watch may hold up until bedtime. I keep a charging cable in my commuter bag, just in case, but have seldom used it.

Do you have Hey Siri or raise to wake enabled? I have those off which greatly increases my battery life. 

seanismorris said:

I read in a review on the Samsung watch the battery life is up to 48 hours.  But, using LTE it lasted 3 hours...

This might not be comparable to the Apple Watch because the Samsung LTE doesn’t require a phone to make calls, but it’s something to consider...

I was looking for a watch that didn’t require a phone when I came across this info.  Needing a phone also was a dealbreaker, and defeated the purpose of getting a smart watch.

Obviously both the Samsung and Apple were a fail for my intended purpose.  But it was interesting in that a true Apple Watch/phone will probably not happen anytime soon.

What do you mean by "This might not be comparable to the Apple Watch because the Samsung LTE doesn’t require a phone to make calls…"?

The cellular Apple Watch makes calls without going thought the iPhone. You don need an iPhone to initially setup the Watch, but even now SW updates can be done from the Watch (someone not possible until last year), but that's it.

I have been without my iPhone countless times and have used the watch to send and receive messages, ask Siri for various info, and made and received calls from my Watch. it's aw wonderful utility and convenience.

Where are you seeing 3 hours of battery life on LTE? I'm guessing that it's 3 hours of life on LTE when on a phone call, but just being a connected and doing normal stuff should get you about a day. Tom Guide's says, "Samsung says the LTE version lasts about 24 to 36 hours on a charge, depending on which size watch you buy, but I didn’t get a chance to test an LTE model." That's what you expect from your always on iPhone compared to actual phone call time with your iPhone.

mbdrake76 said:

I'd still say they are going to be moving to custom-designed AMD chipsets instead.  Probably based around the Zen 2 architecture.  It'll retain x86 compatibility and provide better performance for the power.  The move to an all ARM platform seems a little too early.  Yes, they could if they wanted to, but I still think there needs to be considerable work done before Windows on ARM becomes a proper, mass-embraced thing.

Apple makes macOS. Microsoft makes Windows.