A week ago, Apple announced watchOS 7. An integrated sleep tracker has appeared in the new firmware version. I did an experiment and slept for a week with a watch on my wrist. And today I want to share my experience in using a new feature with you.
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What happened?
A week ago, Apple presented new versions of firmware for its devices, including watches – watchOS 7. New versions of firmware will be available after the annual autumn presentation of Apple, and for developers a beta version is available now.
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A few new watchOS 7 screens
Why is it important?
5 years have passed since the presentation of the first version of Apple Watch. And since the announcement of the first hours, the most anticipated feature has been sleep tracking. At that time (2015), there were already many wearable devices with this function (Jawbone UP, Fitbit, MiBand). And now 5 years later, the Sleep Tracking function will appear in the Apple Watch – Apple fans rejoice (well, I’m sure так)
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The first Apple Watch came out in 2015
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My experience with sleep trackers
I started to get involved in sleep monitoring back in 2014. I wanted to understand how I sleep, how much I sleep and how to get enough sleep. I had Jawbone UP (an expensive and uncomfortable device), Xiaomi Mi Band (perhaps one of the most convenient and cheap trackers) and Apple Watch 3.
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I tried to track sleep using Sleep Cycle, AutoSleep (and others). But not one got accustomed: I forgot to turn on Sleep Cycle before bed, and AutoSleep has a rather overloaded interface. And only the Mi Band wore for a long time (they are not felt on the hand, the battery holds for 2 weeks and the bracelet itself determines when I went to bed).
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By the way, it is important to mention that over the years, killer features of all wearable trackers and applications for smartphones and watches had a “smart” alarm clock and fixing of deep and surface phases of sleep.
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There is a theory according to which a person wakes up easier when he is in the surface phase of sleep. And these devices like They are able to determine these phases of sleep and wake up precisely in the surface phase. Those. if the alarm clock is set at 6:00, the tracker will determine that at 5:45 you are in the surface phase and wake up at that very moment.
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As far as tracking the phases of sleep and a smart alarm clock are useful features, I can not judge, my awakening a smart alarm clock did not make it easier – I chose for myself go to bed at the same time and sleep at least 8 hours.
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WWDC20. Sleep announcement
Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our health, but also one of the least understood. Sleep tracking is good, but Apple went further and added the ability to schedule sleep.
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When using it for the first time, Sleep will offer you to select a sleep mode and, if necessary, set up a separate schedule for each day, set a sleep goal (I have 8 hours a day), a rest period (how many minutes before sleep, put the phone into silent mode), and also enable the Sleep application on the watch.
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In my case, this is from 22:00 to 6:00
Now, 30 minutes before sleep, the phone goes into sleep preparation mode (you can configure access to programs that will help you relax before going to bed – for example, a meditation application).
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The watch will also go into night mode – the screen will darken, the watch will lock so as not to accidentally press a button in a dream.
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In Sleep Tracking mode, the Apple Watch uses an accelerometer to capture subtle movements associated with breathing and to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness.
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In the morning the clock wakes up with a soft and very pleasant pulsating vibration – it resembles a slow pulse during sleep, then a higher pulse and faster (I even thought at first that the first phase of the pulsation coincides with my current pulse). After waking up, the clock shows a welcome screen with information about the battery charge and the temperature for the day.
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Also on the clock you can see the sleep schedule of the current night and the duration of sleep compared to the previous night.
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By the way, overnight my Apple Watch 3 consumes only 9% of the battery.
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In the Health application, you can see the sleep schedule. It shows how many times during the night I woke up, how many hours I slept, the average sleep time, as well as the minimum and maximum heart rate during the night.
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There are also defects in Sleep
If I wake up earlier than the alarm clock, I have no way to tell the clock that I woke up and I’m not going to fall asleep anymore. I’ll write this to the beta version, as the announcement of features on the Apple website says “If you wake up to the alarm, the watch will ask if you want to turn it off.”
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I also write to the beta that until the alarm goes off, the clock does not transmit information about last night to the Health service on the phone. Those. if the alarm is set at 6:00, and I woke up at 5:30 (and unlocked the clock and phone), until 6:00 in the Health application there will be no information about the dream.
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While the application is not able to capture the deep and superficial phases of sleep, there is also no “smart” alarm mode (maybe because these features are useless?).
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conclusions
Something that many owners of Apple Watch have been waiting for a long time happened – a native sleep tracker has appeared. So far, the program is raw, but I have high hopes for it and I think that soon it will have more useful functions (after all, Apple has low-level access to hardware and they can collect more data than third-party developers through the public API).
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The program is already fully operational, but if you need a “smart” alarm clock and information about the phases of sleep, then this is not about Sleep (at least for now, and I think Apple has quite objective reasons for that).
