There may be hope for Apple Watches sold with disabled blood-oxygen sensors

Following the news in December that the two most recent models of Apple Watch were banned from sale in the U.S. over a patent dispute, Apple moved quickly to get around the ban by removing the offending feature. The result was that the Series 9 and Ultra 2 Watches returned to sale, but without blood-oxygen measurement, one of its key health features.

This week, however, we’ve learned that it will be possible—indeed trivially easy, from the sounds of it—for Apple to re-enable pulse oximetry on those very same watches when it gets legal clearance to do so. This will be good news for those who’ve bought Apple Watches over the past couple of weeks and were lamenting the loss of the marquee feature.

The news comes from the intellectual property news site IPFray, which reported Tuesday on the release of technical details from the dispute between Apple and the Italian firm Masimo, which owns the disputed patents. As part of the investigation of the modified watches, it turns out that Masimo jailbroke an iPhone and used it to re-enable the blood-oxygen feature on one of the devices.

In other words, the modification process didn’t involve the removal of the components used to measure blood oxygen; they’re all still present in the watches sold since the ban. Rather, according to IPFray, “There is some hardware ‘designation’ in the newer Watches that tells the software in those Watches not to perform pulse oximetry although all of the necessary components are present.” And if Masimo can re-enable those components by jailbreaking an iPhone, it will presumably be vastly more straightforward for Apple itself to do this via a software update.

For now, of course, Apple wouldn’t dare to reverse the modification, because its legal appeal is ongoing. But if the company wins on appeal (which IPFray estimates as a 30 percent or higher chance), you can bet that owners won’t have to wait long before a software update appears and they find themselves with a new feature on their wrists. And even if Apple loses the appeal, it will still be able to re-enable the feature when Masimo’s patent expires in August 2028. That’s quite a long wait, but maybe you’ll be able to follow Masimo’s playbook and do your own jailbreaking… not that we’d recommend anything like that.

We’re expecting to see Apple Watch Series 10, Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3rd generation, running watchOS 11, launch in September 2024 at the company’s Glowtime event (see how to watch the September event). If you’re in the market for a new Apple Watch, see our Apple Watch buying guide, round-up of the best Apple Watch deals, and advice on whether you should buy Apple Watch now or wait. You might also be interested in what other new Apple products are coming this year, and when is the next Apple event.