Mysterious Health Sensor Appears on 2024 Apple Watch Prototype
Credit: StellaFudge / X
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A collector of Apple prototypes has recently shared some images of what’s believed to be an Apple Watch Series 10 that Apple was testing at some point during its hardware development cycle. While such prototype models aren’t uncommon, this one has a surprise twist: a health sensor layout that’s somewhat different from anything we’ve ever seen.
While the purpose of the new design isn’t entirely clear, Apple has been working on at least two new health sensors for a while — blood pressure and blood glucose monitoring, which suggests that this prototype may have been designed to test a new health feature that didn’t make it into the final product.
The prototype is fully functional and running a late build of watchOS 11.1, which identifies it as an “Apple Watch Series 10 (GPS).” However, the test watchOS build lacks the usual stock apps, which can only be installed via Apple’s internal network. This means there’s nothing here that could help identify what the health sensor may be for or even test basic functionality like heart rate.
The collector, @StellaFudge, speculates that “a test platform for blood sugar is a likely possibility.” Still, it seems more probable that these sensors are related to Apple’s blood pressure tracking ambitions, as those are reportedly much farther along.
Apple has been working on blood sugar monitoring for 15 years, and most reputable sources suggest that it’s still years away from cracking this nut in terms of delivering reliable readings that would meet the necessary standards. Reports of it coming in the near term have always been speculative or downright spurious.
On the other hand, there have not only been more solid reports of Apple’s work on blood pressure tracking, but it’s a feature that Samsung has already included on its Galaxy Watch 7, although it has yet to be cleared by US health regulators. Apple had reportedly planned to create a complete blood pressure monitoring solution as far back as the Apple Watch Series 6 in 2020 but was unable to get it working accurately enough. By all reports, it’s since given up on a system that would provide specific systolic and diastolic readings in favor of a solution that would simply detect potential hypertension (high blood pressure), notifying the wearer to take a more accurate ready with a proper blood pressure cuff.
This would be similar to the approach that Apple has taken with health monitoring features such as wrist temperature, which establishes a baseline and then lets the user know if they’re above or below their normal body temperature rather than trying to replace a proper thermometer. The problem is that the wrist isn’t an ideal place to take accurate temperature or blood pressure readings.
Further, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported last summer that Apple planned to bring a blood pressure sensor to the Apple Watch Series 10. While that didn’t happen, Gurman doesn’t usually go in for random speculation; he gets his information from reliable enough sources to suggest this was something Apple was working on, in which case it wouldn’t be surprising to find that the company had developed one or more prototypes with a new health sensor array to support this.
It’s also interesting that this prototype was running a build of watchOS 11.1 that was close to the final release. That suggests that the prototype was still being tested around the time the Apple Watch Series 10 was released to the public. Apple had obviously given up on the new sensors by then, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t testing them for inclusion in the Apple Watch Series 11 or another future model.
Sadly, it looks like Apple is still struggling with blood pressure tracking, which casts some doubt on whether we’ll even see it in the Apple Watch Series 11. We wouldn’t rule that out entirely, but Apple is getting down to crunch time to finalize its Apple Watch hardware if it wants to make its usual September release schedule, which means a decision on whether to include any new sensors will have to be made soon.
