Fitbit’s mid-year surprise: A hearty upgrade despite a quiet 2023

Fitbit has finally stirred the waters in 2023 after months of relative silence. The health-tech behemoth, now a part of Google’s vast ecosystem, announced a software refresh for its popular devices, including the Sense 2, Versa 4, Charge 5, Luxe, and Inspire 3.

Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets

Fitbit’s latest feature release demonstrates the evolving synergies between the fitness wearable company and Google. This update marks the first time Fitbit devices are participating in a Pixel feature drop. In the past, this was exclusively reserved for Pixel-branded devices. This new set of features comes amid speculation about Google’s increased focus on its Pixel Watch and rumours of Fitbit’s first fully fledged children’s smartwatch.

Fitbit breaks silence with new feature drops

The addition of the Daily Readiness Score on wearables is one of the notable enhancements in the June 2023 feature drop. This metric was previously available only as a dedicated tile in the smartphone app. It gathers data on the user’s activity, sleep quality, and heart rate variability to provide recommendations on the intensity of exercise for the day.

Daily Readiness can now be accessed directly from your Fitbit device, eliminating the need to use the Fitbit app. This should make it more convenient to use.

Following in these footsteps – a new Menstrual Health tile, exclusive to the Sense 2 and Versa 4, allows users to manage their menstrual health directly on their watch. This feature allows you to log periods, view cycle states, and edit information without having to reach for your smartphone.

Meanwhile, the Fitbit Charge 5, Luxe, and Inspire 3 models have received a new set of clock faces. Users will notice a few new options available in the Fitbit gallery app.

These models, along with the Sense 2 and Versa 4, also get the ability to display the complete list of exercise modes directly on the device. This an improvement over the previous system, which required launching the Fitbit mobile app to access the full list.

Finally, Fitbit has expanded language support for global characters and right-to-left text in phone notifications, further improving the user experience. This update allows Fitbit users to read texts in Hindi and view caller ID in Arabic. Users can also check calendar events in Vietnamese, among other languages.

Fitbit’s silence has been unusual this year. There hasn’t been a single new hardware announcement, which has been made all the worse by company removing some of its existing software functionality. The rollout of these new features has just begun and will continue over the next few weeks. It will help to provide Fitbit users with a new experience with their devices.

Only time will tell whether this silence is related to the Google merger or the search giant’s increased focus on its Pixel Watch. We shall know soon enough. Fitbit usually releases at least one new device in time for the IFA Berlin trade show in early September. Following that, the Pixel Watch 2 should be available in October.

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