Fitbit supercharges its smartwatches with its new 3.0 operating system

By Christian de Looper Published December 18, 2018

Fitbit is positioning its smartwatches to take on the likes of Apple. The company announced Fitbit OS 3.0 for the Fitbit Versa and Fitbit Ionic, which should help make them a whole lot more useful.

The software update itself includes a number of new features. For starters, you will now be able to get a view of your daily stats straight from the watch itself — so you won’t need to reach for your phone to see them. From the device, you will able to see things like sleep and exercise, and you will also be able to quickly log things like your weight and water intake. These features should help make the watches better stand-alone devices, which is where the smartwatch industry is headed in general.

Recommended Videos

Next up, Fitbit is bringing 10 new third-party apps to the Fitbit Ionic and Fitbit Versa. Some of those, like Couch to 5K, Genius Wrist, and MySwimPro, are now available. Others, however, will come to the smartwatches at some point in 2019. Those will include apps like MindBody, Moonlight, Charity Miles, Gold’s Amp, and more.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Fitbit is supercharging the Fitbit app a little, too. The company announced that it will be adding female health tracking to the app, which Fitbit says will give users a comprehensive view of their menstrual cycles, including symptom trends, over time. As mentioned, the feature won’t be coming as part of the Fitbit OS 3.0 update, but rather will available within the Fitbit app — so if you don’t get the Fitbit OS 3.0 update, you will still be able to use the new feature.

It’s likely we’ll start seeing more great apps come to Fitbit in the near future, too. Fitbit is opening up new APIs to developers who want to build for devices like the Versa and Ionic, which should help those developers build more complex and high-quality apps.

Of course, Fitbit has an uphill battle ahead of it. The Apple Watch is the clear leader in the wearables market these days, and in response, Android manufacturers building Wear OS devices are working on better devices with improved health tracking. It’s likely that will only continue too — meaning companies with a health-tracking background like Fitbit will need to find ways to differentiate themselves.

Topics

Christian de Looper

Contributor

Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

Mobile

Psst … wanna buy the massive Twitter logo sign?

The Twitter sign that once appeared outside the company's head office.

The massive Twitter logo that once adorned the outside of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco is up for auction.

Imagine — the iconic 560-pound item could look great in the yard, or perhaps you can stick some legs on it and use it as a table. Alternatively, if you want to be talk of the town (though maybe not in a good way), just stick it on the roof of your house.

Mobile

Samsung confirms One UI 7 release date for first wave of Galaxy owners

Samsung phone running One UI 7 software experience.

The wait for Android 15 on Samsung smartphones will finally be over early next month. Samsung has announced that the highly-anticipated One UI 7 update will be released widely via the stable channel starting April 7 for Galaxy smartphone users.
In the first wave of rollout, the Galaxy S24 series phones, alongside Samsung’s current generation foldable — Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 — will be covered. It will eventually expand to older flagships, alongside a bunch of mid-range phones in the Galaxy A-series, as well.
In the coming weeks, One UI 7 will also land on the Galaxy S24 FE, Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Z Fold 5, and Galaxy Z Flip 5 phones. On the tablet side, the Galaxy Tab S10 will be the early recipient, followed by the Galaxy Tab S9 series.
A Guided Demo of Galaxy AI | Galaxy S25 Series | Samsung
Samsung kicked off the beta-testing program in December last year, and in the past few weeks, the pool of devices has steadily expanded. One UI 7 brings a fresh design language to the phone, with a cleaner Home Screen, improved widgets, and more intuitive lock screen.
Leading the list of new features is the new Now Bar, which tracks important events and keeps users updated via a dedicated widget, right on the Lock Screen. AI is a huge part of the One UI 7 experience, riding under the Galaxy AI banner. Among them is a feature called AI Select, which is aware of the on-screen content, and based on what users highlight, it will offer actionable buttons.
Galaxy AI | Now Brief | Galaxy S25 Ultra | Samsung
For example, if there’s a ticket in the camera view, AI select can automatically surface one-tap controls such as adding it to the Calendar or showing the venue on Google Maps. Then there’s Writing Assist, which offers a handful of AI-powered facilities such as rewriting, summarization, and proofreading, working in the same vein as Writing Tools on Apple devices.
However, do keep in mind that not all One UI 7 features will be available across every compatible device. For example, the audio eraser feature, which can selectively erase noise from videos, will not go beyond phones older than the Galaxy S24 series, Galaxy Tab S10 duo, or the sixth-generation Samsung foldable phones. Similar is the situation with natural language search in the Settings app.

Mobile

Apple might serve a massive front camera upgrade on iPhone 17

An iPhone 16 laying on a shelf with its screen on.

The domain of Apple leaks is currently obsessed with the controversial iPhone 17 Pro design refresh, which could stir some heated debate with its massive camera hump. A lot of chatter is also focused on the svelte iPhone 17 Air. Yet, it seems there are a few other internal upgrades worth getting excited about.
According to analyst Jeff Pu, Apple will equip all four iPhone 17 series models with an upgraded 24-megapixel front camera. So far, Apple has stuck with a 12-megapixel selfie snapper on its mainline iPhones. Moreover, the company hasn’t ever deployed a 24-megapixel camera sensor, keeping its experiments limited to 12-megapixel and 48-megapixel units in the past few years.
The research note by Pu, which was seen by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, doesn’t go into details about the specifications or feature details of the new 24-megapixel front snapper on the iPhone 17 series. However, we can take an educated guess, based on what Apple accomplished when it switched from 12-megapixel to 48-megapixel rear cameras.

A 24-megapixel sensor will most likely default to pixel-binning for delivering pictures and videos at a lower resolution than the native pixel count. Pixel-binning essentially combines the light data collected by adjacent pixels, creating what is colloquially known as a super-pixel.
The sum total of these efforts are pictures that are more detailed and with more realistic color rendering, especially in low-light scenarios. Depending on how the pixels are combined, the final image is usually a lower-resolution shot, but more pleasing to look at.
For example, the iPhone 16 Pro’s 48-megapixel main camera does 4-in-1 pixel binning to produce 12-megapixel pictures, but you can still stick full-res 48-megapixel shots, too. There’s also an intermediary option to to get the best of both worlds with 24-megapixel clicks.
With a 24-megapixel selfie camera coming into the picture, iPhone 17 buyers can expect improved selfies and better-quality video calls. Moreover, since there are more pixels to collect light data, Apple might leverage it to offer more advanced camera features, too.