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.

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.

Christian de Looper

Former Digital Trends Contributor

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

Topics

Computing

Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt

The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.

The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits.

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price.

Wearables

Slacked off all summer? Here are 3 fitness trackers that’ll help you stay accountable as you head back to school

Three trackers, three price points, three totally different approaches to keeping you honest about your own goals.

A person wearing the Whoop 5.0.

Summer break did what it usually does. Your sleep schedule drifted, workouts happened less often than you'd hoped, and by the time August rolled around, you were feeling it. You've got a plan to get back on track once the school year starts and your days have more structure, but you know how that usually goes. The first two weeks are solid, then the routine quietly slips.

A fitness tracker won't get you off your couch. What it will do is put a number in front of you every day, one that makes it obvious whether you stuck to your goal or slacked off. That small bit of visibility is often the difference between meaning to work out and actually doing it. Back-to-school season is a good time to buy in, since you're already resetting more than one part of your routine, and the overlap makes the habit more likely to stick. To keep the odds in your favor, here are three fitness trackers that can help you stay accountable and actually hit your goals.

Wearables

Galaxy Watch 9 vs. Watch Series 11: Has Apple finally met its smartwatch match?

From AI-powered health coaching to outdoor fitness tracking, here's how Samsung's Galaxy Watch 9 stacks up against Apple's Watch Series 11.

Wristwatch, Arm, Body Part

These days, the real battleground between smartwatches is who can turn a wrist-worn, sensor-loaded device into something that resembles a personal fitness trainer, and this year's crop of flagship wearables takes that fight more seriously than ever.

Samsung just refreshed its mainstream Galaxy Watch line with a new silicon and a batch of clinically-backed health tools, landing squarely on Apple's home turf of preventive wellness tracking. Apple, for its part, has spent the better part of a year letting its Series 11 sit as the reigning pick for anyone inside its ecosystem, propped up by a software catalog few rivals match feature-for-feature.