Apple Watch can Measure Blood Oxygen Level

The most important reveal from the Apple Watch Teardown by iFixit is that the Apple Watch heart rate monitor sensor is more sophisticated than Apple said.

Early this morning iFixit hosted a live teardown of the Apple Watch. Apple has enclosed the important parts with lots of glue and metal enclosures, which resulted to a rather boring reveal of the insides of the Apple Watch.

The only big revelation is that the Apple Watch is more capable than known in terms of heart rate monitoring. The Apple Watch heart rate monitor is actually a plethysmograph and could measure your blood oxygen level. It is likely that Apple has not yet supported that functionality due to accuracy problems. It could also be that measuring oxygen levels could get the Apple Watch into the cross hairs of the FDA.

Apple is though likely working through these issues and will update the Apple Watch with the blood oxygen level functionality. Healthy individuals at sea level have an oxygen saturation values between 96% and 99%. The level should be above 94%. An SaO2 (arterial oxygen saturation) value below 90% causes hypoxemia.

iFixit has now released a video of the Apple Watch teardown. Watch below.