The company has confirmed the purchase but offered almost nothing beyond that. The timing is difficult to ignore, though, because the company applied to trademark Muscle Battery earlier this year with a description built specifically around muscle oxygen saturation.

A very short confirmation

Garmin’s entire comment on the deal was that it could confirm the Moxy Monitor acquisition but had nothing further to share. There is no accompanying newsroom announcement, purchase price or explanation of what happens to Moxy’s products and customers.

That lack of detail is unusual, but the two companies hardly need an introduction. Moxy has worked with the Garmin ecosystem for more than a decade, adding ANT+ support in 2014 before becoming an early Connect IQ showcase and later gaining direct support through the ANT+ Muscle Oxygen profile.

Current Moxy sensors already work with compatible Garmin watches and Edge computers. Athletes can display muscle oxygen data during an activity and store it in the resulting FIT file alongside heart rate, power, pace and other workout metrics.

The acquisition therefore brings an existing partner inside Garmin rather than starting a relationship from scratch. Garmin gains the sensor technology, algorithms and practical knowledge behind a product that high-performance athletes, coaches and researchers already use.

The missing piece in Muscle Battery

Back in April, our original Muscle Battery report uncovered a Garmin trademark application covering software that captures, processes and analyses muscle oxygen saturation. The wording pointed towards a new performance metric, but it also left Garmin with an obvious hardware problem.

A normal smartwatch cannot produce useful muscle-specific SmO2 readings from the wrist alone. The sensor needs to sit over the target muscle, which is why Moxy users attach the unit to areas such as the quadriceps, calf or upper arm.

Moxy uses near-infrare light to measure changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin and myoglobin inside muscle tissue. The resulting SmO2 data can show how quickly a working muscle consumes oxygen, how well it recovers between intervals and when local fatigue starts becoming the limiting factor.

Garmin already had the software name and an unusually specific description of what it wanted to analyse. Buying Moxy potentially supplies the missing sensing hardware, along with years of calibration work and experience turning a complicated physiological signal into usable training data.

Do not expect this inside a watch

The obvious temptation is to imagine muscle oxygen becoming another reading collected by Garmin’s Elevate optical sensor. That is unlikely because SmO2 is local to the muscle underneath the sensor, rather than a whole-body measurement that works from any convenient spot on the wrist.

A separate accessory makes much more sense. Garmin could shrink the existing Moxy hardware into a smaller pod or strap, then connect it directly to watches, cycling computers and Garmin Connect without requiring users to assemble the current mix of data fields and analysis tools.

The company could also turn the raw percentage into something easier to understand. Muscle Battery suggests a consumer-facing score that tracks how ready a particular muscle group is for more work, rather than expecting athletes to interpret every rise and fall in SmO2 themselves.

What happens to Moxy now

Garmin has not explained whether Moxy will continue operating as a separate brand. It has also said nothing about the Moxy Portal, existing sensor sales, customer support or whether current owners should expect deeper integration with Garmin Connect.

There is no immediate reason for existing hardware to stop working. Moxy sensors already support ANT+, Bluetooth and internal recording, while their Garmin compatibility does not depend entirely on a proprietary cloud service.

The bigger question is what Garmin bought Moxy to build next. It could preserve the existing specialist business, develop a smaller Garmin-branded sensor or use Moxy’s technology and patents as the foundation for a broader muscle-recovery platform.

There is an obvious parallel with Whoop here. They have also explored muscle-oxygen sensing, and have acquired Humon muscle oxygen patents. So Whoop now owns technology and intellectual property from a company that had already put muscle oxygen sensing into a commercial sports wearable.

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The watch can escalate the response

Honor describes a four-level response system rather than a simple low-heart-rate warning. The Watch 6 Pro continuously assesses signals in the background, with Honor saying the initial dynamic assessment takes around 1.5 to 3 seconds. If the suspected cardiac arrest condition continues beyond three seconds, the watch moves to a strong vibration warning. 

Things become more interesting at the highest risk level. Honor says the watch can start calling emergency contacts, show AED resuscitation instructions across the display and send a request for help to people nearby. The idea is that the watch keeps trying to attract assistance even if the wearer cannot respond or call for help themselves.

That is a different approach from the usual abnormal heart-rate notification. Honor had already explored cardiac risk features on devices such as the Honor Watch GS 5, but the Watch 6 Pro pushes the concept further.

There are some important caveats. Honor says users need to join its cardiac arrest warning research programme to use the feature. And for now, this is only a China launch, so there is no reason to assume the same cardiac functions would be available internationally.

Blood pressure is another big part of the watch

The Watch 6 Pro also introduces what Honor calls Blood Pressure 2.0. The system uses its optical sensing hardware to estimate readings, so this is not a watch with an inflatable cuff.

Honor says the software can now provide AI-based interpretation and look at blood pressure alongside activity, sleep patterns and emotional state. But, this feature is tied to Honor’s health research programme and should not be confused with a conventional medical blood pressure monitor.

This is a sizeable step up from the standard Honor Watch 6 we reviewed earlier this year. That watch handled everyday heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep and fitness tracking well, but lacked ECG and the more ambitious cardiovascular features Honor is now putting into the Pro model.

Honor has changed the display as well

Health tracking is getting most of the attention, but Honor has made some unusual hardware choices too. The Watch 6 Pro has a 1.5-inch dual-layer OLED display, which Honor claims is a first for a wearable, with global excitation brightness reaching a whopping 4,500 nits, and up to 5,500 nits of local peak brightness!

Battery life is rated at up to 18 days under lighter use, around 10 days with typical use and seven days with the always-on display enabled. Turning on the full health-monitoring mode cuts that figure to around four days. 

Pricing starts at CNY 1,699 (around 250 USD) in China. The company is offering steel and nano-microcrystalline ceramic versions. Honor has not announced an international release, so there is no European or US price yet. 

Source: HONOR

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The deadline appears to have moved

Back in June, a Google Health Community specialist said September 30, 2026 was the exact date when the Fitbit Web API would be fully decommissioned and disabled. Existing authorisations and refresh tokens were also expected to stop working at that point.

But a developer posted on Google’s support forum on September 24 saying they had received a new email from Google. According to the message, Google is “extending the user migration deadline to October 30, 2026,” while official developer support for the legacy Fitbit API will still end on September 30. 

That suggests Google may now be separating two deadlines. Developer support would end on September 30, but existing Fitbit API connections could keep working until October 30 while users complete the migration.

Google’s own documentation still says September

Google’s main developer page still says the legacy Fitbit Web API will be turned down in September 2026 and tells developers to migrate before then. It does not currently mention the reported October 30 extension. So this is all yet to be confirmed.

There is some support for the later date elsewhere. MyDataHelps, which provides health-data tools used in research projects, has updated its own migration guidance to say the Fitbit API will shut down on October 30.

So October 30 increasingly looks like the new cutoff, but Google’s public-facing documentation remains inconsistent. With September 30 almost here, that is likely to leave some developers wondering exactly what will stop working this week.

Users still have to reconnect

Moving from the Fitbit Web API to Google Health is not something developers can handle entirely in the background. Google uses a different OAuth system for the new API, so existing Fitbit access and refresh tokens cannot simply move across.

Users therefore need to authorise the connection again. Google’s migration guide recommends temporarily supporting both systems, keeping existing users on the Fitbit API until they complete the new Google Health consent process. 

That makes an extra month useful. Developers may already have moved their apps to Google Health technically, but some users will not have opened the app, seen the migration notice or reconnected their Fitbit account yet.

The switch is part of Google’s wider move away from the old Fitbit software platform. The company has rebuilt the API around Google infrastructure and Google OAuth, while retaining access to data from Fitbit devices and Pixel Watches.

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Seven coordinate formats are now available

The new setting sits under Settings > Preferences > Coordinates. Owners running firmware 6.4.16 are reporting seven choices: decimal degrees, degrees and decimal minutes, degrees/minutes/seconds, MGRS, UTM, British Grid and Japan Grid. 

That makes the Cheetah 2 Ultra considerably more useful alongside conventional maps. UTM is widely used on topographic maps because it gives you a grid reference rather than forcing you to work with latitude and longitude, while MGRS provides another grid-based option for users who already work with that system.

British Grid should be particularly handy for people using Ordnance Survey maps in Great Britain. Japan Grid does the same sort of job for compatible Japanese mapping, so Zepp Health has gone beyond simply adding UTM and calling it a day.

Cheetah 2 Ultra navigation keeps getting better

This is not the first navigation upgrade the watch has received since launch. An earlier firmware release added remaining distance, ascent and descent to the next waypoint and final destination, alongside GPS improvements under tree cover. 

Zepp OS 6 then brought route previews and more mapping changes to the watch. That release also expanded the map scale options and continued pushing the Cheetah 2 Ultra further toward proper outdoor navigation. 

Adding proper coordinate formats fits that positioning much better than another general smartwatch feature would. It is the sort of thing most users will ignore, but for hikers, trail runners and anyone using a watch alongside printed maps, it fills a real gap.

One obvious piece is still missing

The strange part is that coordinates still cannot be added as a normal workout data field. Owners can view them from the map screen, but they cannot keep their current coordinates visible alongside fields such as elapsed time, distance or elevation.

That makes the new formats slightly more awkward to use than they need to be. If you are navigating with a paper map, having UTM or MGRS permanently visible on a workout page would be much quicker than switching back to the map whenever you want to check your position.

Waypoint management also remains fairly basic. The same firmware adds more waypoint icons, but users report that saved waypoints still cannot be renamed, while courses and waypoints cannot be sorted alphabetically or by distance. 

For now, though, firmware 6.4.16 gives the Cheetah 2 Ultra a noticeably better coordinate system. It is a useful step for anyone relying on the watch for outdoor navigation.

Sources: Zepp Health via Reddit

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We spotted the Galaxy Watch9 Classic in a Russian regulatory declaration last week. At first glance, the obvious explanation was that Samsung had planned the watch, changed its mind and left the name sitting in some old paperwork.

The timing makes that explanation less tidy. The document was not registered before Samsung unveiled its 2026 watches, it appeared afterwards.

The filing came after the Watch9 launch

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra2 on July 22. There was no Galaxy Watch9 Classic, despite the Classic name having already appeared in the wider regulatory trail around Samsung’s smartwatch lineup.

Then, on August 14, a new Russian Declaration of Conformity was registered. The document explicitly lists Galaxy Watch9, Galaxy Watch9 Classic and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 together as smartwatches.

That puts the registration roughly three weeks after Samsung had already shown us its 2026 smartwatch lineup. The timing is what makes this more interesting than a forgotten pre-launch reference.

If the declaration had been registered months before Unpacked, it would be easy enough to dismiss the Watch9 Classic as a product Samsung considered and later cancelled. But someone was still filing paperwork containing that exact name after the Watch9 and Ultra2 were already official.

It could still be a cancelled watch

This does not definitely prove Samsung is preparing a Galaxy Watch9 Classic for release. Regulatory documents can include products that never make it to shops, so the filing alone is not enough to treat the watch as confirmed.

But there is the other possibility is that Samsung never intended the Watch9 Classic to arrive alongside the standard Watch9. A later release would explain why the name remained active in regulatory paperwork without appearing at the July event.

That is why the Galaxy Watch9 Classic remains a product to watch rather than something we can say is definitely coming. The filing gives us the name, but it does not give us a release date or tell us what Samsung intends to do with it.

Samsung’s current lineup does leave an obvious gap, though. The Galaxy Watch9 covers the mainstream end and Ultra2 sits above it, while anyone wanting Samsung’s physical rotating bezel still has to look at the previous-generation Classic.

The post Why did the Galaxy Watch9 Classic appear after Samsung’s launch appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

We first reported Xiaomi was exploring Apple Watch support back in December 2024. At the time it felt like one of those ideas that would eventually disappear, yet here we are nearly two years later with it actually launching alongside the Xiaomi 18 Pro series.

The feature was introduced alongside the Xiaomi 18 Pro series this week as part of HyperOS 4. Xiaomi’s own compatibility page now spells out exactly how it works, and this goes quite a bit further than simply forwarding the odd notification.

What actually works

Once connected, calls, text messages and app notifications from the Xiaomi phone can appear on the Apple Watch. Xiaomi’s Super Island live activities can also be sent across, while health and exercise information recorded by the Apple Watch can travel in the opposite direction and appear inside the Mi Fitness app.

There is also two-way device finding. A Xiaomi phone can make the Apple Watch ring, while the watch can do the same to the phone, which makes the connection feel more like a proper device pairing than a basic notification workaround.

Xiaomi handles this through its Xiaomi Connect app on the Apple Watch. After installing it, the watch displays a QR code that you scan using the Xiaomi phone, then you grant the relevant permissions on both devices.

The official compatibility requirements are fairly broad. Xiaomi says the phone needs HyperOS 4 or later, while supported Apple hardware includes Apple Watch Series 6 and newer, Apple Watch SE 2 and newer, and every Apple Watch Ultra model running watchOS 11 or later.

You still need an iPhone

There is a pretty big catch, though. This does not turn the Apple Watch into a normal Android smartwatch that you can buy, take out of the box and pair straight to a Xiaomi phone.

Xiaomi explicitly says the Apple Watch must first be paired with an iPhone and activated before it can connect to the Xiaomi handset. So an iPhone is still part of the setup process, even if the Xiaomi phone can take over some of the everyday interaction afterwards.

What the company has done is make the watch considerably more useful after someone moves from iPhone to one of its phones. You could keep an existing Apple Watch rather than immediately replacing it simply because you changed smartphone platform.

Part of a bigger push

Xiaomi has been steadily building bridges to Apple’s ecosystem, with file transfers and connectivity for iPhone, iPad and Mac already in place. The watch was always the toughest piece to crack. Xiaomi’s own watches are still the simpler choice, but they’re not who this is for.

Xiaomi admits some features depend on the specific device. It’s not full independence from the iPhone, but it’s a lot closer than anyone expected two years ago.

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Until now this was a real pain if you trained on a Garmin but lived in Google Health for everything else. The workout would show up fine, yet Cardio Load acted like it never happened. Google Health 5.09 fixes that.

Why Garmin users should care

Plenty of people split things up these days. Garmin does the serious training, while a Fitbit or Pixel Watch handles sleep, passive tracking and the Google side of things. I’ve written before about Fitbit Air working better alongside a Garmin than as a replacement for one.

The trouble was that a hard Garmin run did nothing for your Cardio Load. Pick the “wrong” watch for a session and your numbers looked lower than they should. People had been complaining about it for months. Google said it would pass the feedback on, and now it has actually done something about it.

Heart-rate data is required

There is one important condition. The imported workout needs heart-rate data, because Google uses that information when calculating how much Cardio Load to assign to the session.

For Garmin and Apple Watch workouts, that should not be a hurdle. Both normally record heart rate throughout exercise, although the relevant data still needs to make it through the sync into Google Health.

Google is not importing Garmin’s own Training Load score or Apple’s training metrics. It is taking the workout information it receives and using that data to calculate its own Cardio Load figure.

Which means Garmin’s Training Readiness, recovery metrics and deeper training analysis do not suddenly become Google Health metrics just because the workout has synced across. I saw that difference first-hand when I ran a 5K with Fitbit Air against Garmin. The basic heart-rate and distance figures were very close, but Garmin still provided far more depth once the workout was finished.

What actually syncs

Garmin data gets in via Health Connect on Android or Apple Health on iPhone. That covers workout summaries, heart rate, steps, distance, floors and calories. Garmin’s HRV, VO2 max and detailed lap data still don’t come through.

Apple Watch shares a bit more, including routes, VO2 max and some overnight vitals. For Cardio Load none of that really matters though. If the workout carries heart-rate data, Google can use it.

One odd detail

Google’s support page still says Cardio Load only uses first-party data, which flatly contradicts the 5.09 release notes. The update only started rolling out on September 25, so the help page just hasn’t caught up yet.

Small change, big win if you mix brands. You can train with whatever watch you like and still keep Cardio Load honest.

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Speediance Strap is a newcomer to the screenless band space, and it is coming at this from a slightly different angle than WHOOP. The company is better known for its connected home gym equipment, and the Strap is its first real push into everyday wearable tracking.

I have the device in testing right now and, so far, it is working well. I am still going through the health, sleep, recovery and workout data, so I am saving the proper verdict for the full review. That is coming soon.

WHOOP has had this corner of the market mostly to itself for years, but the screenless fitness tracker category has become a lot busier lately. Speediance is clearly aiming at the same crowd, just with a few very different ideas about how to do it.

View Whoop on Whoop’s website. View Speediance Strap on Speediance website.

Speediance puts core body temperature to work

Most wearables stop at skin temperature. Speediance Strap goes further by estimating core body temperature using heat-flux sensing, skin temperature and physiological modelling, with the underlying Calera technology supplied by Swiss company greenteg.

I first came across the Speediance Strap at IFA 2026, and this was the feature that caught my attention straight away. More importantly, Speediance does not just collect the data and leave it sitting in a graph. It uses those temperature trends as part of several training features.

Peak Window looks at core temperature and circadian rhythm to suggest when you may be better placed for harder exercise. Warm-Up Readiness follows how your temperature changes once you start moving, while Heat Load Monitoring watches for rising thermal strain during a workout.

WHOOP tracks temperature too, but it does not offer the same estimated core-temperature system or the same set of temperature-led training features. That gives Speediance a genuinely different angle rather than another variation on sleep, strain and recovery scores.

Different approaches to premium hardware

There are actually two Speediance models, and the Strap Pro is the one I’ve been testing. The regular version costs $129 and uses a stainless-steel frame, while the $159 Strap Pro switches to titanium and drops the total weight from 28 grams to just 21 grams.

The Pro also adds an EDA sensor, which measures electrodermal activity. This helps in better estimating your stress levels.

That is quite a different approach to WHOOP’s premium hardware. WHOOP MG adds features such as ECG and Blood Pressure Insights. These are two features Speediance and the Pro version of the same lack.

Charging works differently

Both platforms offer very long battery life, so endurance itself is not a separator. Speediance quotes up to 14 days, while WHOOP 5.0 is also rated for 14-plus days.

The difference is what happens when the battery finally runs down. Speediance uses a magnetic charging dock, which means taking the tracker off while it charges. WHOOP has a more unusual setup on its higher membership tiers, with a Wireless PowerPack that slides over the device and lets you continue wearing it while it charges.

There is an important wrinkle here. WHOOP One comes with a conventional corded Basic Charger rather than the Wireless PowerPack, so charging while wearing the device is not standard across every WHOOP package. The PowerPack comes with WHOOP Peak and Life.

Speediance does not require an ongoing membership

Price is probably where the difference really hits home. The Speediance Strap starts at $129, and once you have bought it, the core tracking keeps working without another compulsory payment hanging over it.

There is an optional Wellness Go service, and Speediance includes a year with the Strap, but you do not need to keep paying just to carry on using the main health and fitness features. That makes the whole thing feel much more like buying a normal wearable.

WHOOP does it completely differently. In the US, WHOOP One costs $199 per year, Peak is $239 and Life is $359, with the hardware bundled into the membership.

To be fair, WHOOP has had years to build out its Recovery, Strain, Sleep and coaching platform, so you are paying for a much more mature ecosystem rather than just the sensor on your wrist. But the basic ownership model is still very different. With Speediance, you buy the hardware and keep using it. With WHOOP, the membership is part of the deal.

I am still testing the Speediance Strap, so I am not ready to call the comparison either way yet. So far it is working well, and my full review will dig much further into heart-rate accuracy, sleep, recovery, exercise tracking, core-temperature features and battery life.

View Whoop on Whoop’s website. View Speediance Strap on Speediance website.

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Basically, WHOOP is looking beyond the familiar respiratory rate number. Instead of only counting how many times you breathe per minute, the system looks at how much the length of one respiratory cycle changes compared with the next.

WHOOP wants to measure variability between breaths

The patent, called “Respiratory Cycle Onset Detection”, was published on September 24 and originally filed in March 2025. The title sounds fairly technical, but the more interesting part is what WHOOP wants to do once it identifies those individual breaths.

The system calculates an RRV score based on changes between respiratory cycles. WHOOP describes several possible calculations, including standard deviation, successive differences, RMSSD, coefficient of variation and median absolute deviation.

There is a loose parallel with HRV here. HRV measures changes in the time between heartbeats, while RRV measures changes between respiratory cycles. They are different physiological signals, but both try to extract more information from variability rather than simply looking at an average rate.

That fits with the way WHOOP already handles recovery. The company combines several measurements rather than relying on a single sensor reading, which is one reason it still stands apart from some of the newer devices in our best screenless fitness tracker guide.

Recovery appears to be a major use case

The patent directly describes using RRV to determine a recovery state. In one example, lower respiratory variability can correspond to greater recovery, while higher variability can indicate lower recovery.

WHOOP also describes combining RRV with measurements such as HRV, sleep scores and recent strain. That suggests RRV could eventually become another input into the existing Recovery calculation rather than appearing as a completely separate headline metric.

The system can also compare current RRV against previous readings and look for longer-term trends. That would allow WHOOP to track whether respiratory patterns are shifting across days or weeks rather than judging a single night in isolation.

Sleep is another potential use. The patent describes using respiratory rate variability to help determine sleep stages, either through thresholds or a machine-learning model.

Existing sensors may be enough

Perhaps the most practical part is that this does not appear to require a new sensor. WHOOP describes extracting respiratory information from changes in the pulse waveform recorded by a wearable physiological monitor.

The patent also describes using accelerometer data to detect breathing-related movement when the wearer is relatively still. Sleep is an obvious opportunity because movement is limited and the device has a long window of continuous data to analyse.

So this could potentially be a software feature built from signals WHOOP hardware already collects. Perhaps via a firmware update. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

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The patent was published on September 17 and describes a miniaturized impedance plethysmography sensor (IPG sensor), built into a computing device. The drawings make the wearable angle pretty obvious too. One example is a smartwatch, while others show small finger-worn devices and even other types of electronics.

Your fingertip becomes part of the sensor

The basic idea is quite neat. Google places a set of miniature electrodes underneath the fingertip, with two used to send a tiny electrical excitation signal through the tissue and another two used to measure the resulting electrical response.

Blood flowing through the finger changes its electrical impedance. By tracking those changes, the system can produce a pulsatile waveform that reflects the blood pulse, and Google says that signal can then be used to determine blood pressure or a proxy for blood pressure. The patent’s process diagram boils the whole thing down to generating IPG data, deriving the pulsatile signal and then estimating blood pressure from it. 

And Google clearly has smartwatch use in mind. Figure 6A shows the system incorporated into a watch worn on the wrist, with the sensing area positioned on the watch body where a finger could be placed against it. Earbuds are another option. As well as smartphones.

That’s not the only idea

And this is not even the only recent Google patent dealing with the problem. A separate application published last month describes a small finger cuff containing an inflatable bladder, multiple pressure sensors and optical sensors. 

That system would inflate around the finger while an array of barometric sensors maps pressure around the digital artery. But as you can see from the image below, it’s not exactly a discreet smart ring.

Optical sensors simultaneously measure the pulse, and the device combines those signals to calculate blood pressure. The patent’s flow diagram specifically shows inflation, pressure mapping, optical measurements and the final blood pressure estimate as parts of the process. 

Where this fits with Google’s plans

It is worth noting that neither patent names a Pixel Watch or Fitbit product. Google has been busy around blood pressure lately, though. It ran a Fitbit Hypertension Lab study with Pixel Watch 3 owners last November, and Blood Pressure Trends is coming to the Pixel watches this fall as part of Health Guardian.

We also covered an earlier Fitbit patent that hinted at blood pressure checks from the wrist in April. Put the two finger filings next to that and Google is clearly working on blood pressure from several directions. Patents do not confirm a release though, so treat these as a look at what Google is exploring.

Source USPTO: September patent, August patent

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