You Don’t Need a New Apple Watch to Get the Latest Health Tracking Features

I have good news for Apple Watch users. If you use an older Apple Watch, like the 9 Series, Apple gives you some functionalities that we first thought of exclusive to the new series 11. “AWE Droping” event Yesterday, the company published three new Apple watches With new features related to health monitoring, but there is a good chance that you get them on a device that you already have.

Indeed, Apple did not mention on stage that these new features are in fact updates to come to Watchos 26 and iOS 26, and some of them do not need new equipment. This means that you may not need to upgrade your Apple Watch to obtain new high blood pressure notifications or a sleep score generated by the apple.

Hypertension notifications come to Apple Watch Series 9 and more

Credit: Apple

Apple has a new blood pressure monitoring system which sends a notification to the user when a high chronic blood pressure model is detected. Apple does not use a blood pressure monitor here with cuff base. Instead, he uses the optical cardiac frequency sensor to analyze how a user’s blood vessels react to heartbeat. He uses data analysis over a 30 -day period to determine if there is a coherent scheme that points to possible hypertension, then warns you if this is the case.

Since this feature is based on the optical heart rate sensor, it turns out that it is not limited to series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3. In fact, it is also supported by Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10 and Ultra 2 (but not Apple Watch Se 3). The functionality will be live for users after the Watchos 26 update and after regulatory approval. Apple says it should be deployed in 150 countries by October.

The sleep score arrives at each Apple Watch from the 6 Series

Credit: Apple

The new metric of the Apple Watch sleep score is, once again, an analysis function of the data. It combines sleep data such as the duration of the sleep, the duration of the sleep stadium, the frequency of the awakening and even more to find a score which informs you how good your quality of sleep was good. It uses data from several sensors such as heart rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen and respiratory frequency to assess the overall quality of your sleep.

This number can then help you decide if you want to attack a more intensive training session, or if you want to take things easily and go earlier in the day.

And ultimately, it will be deployed to all Apple watches that support sleep monitoring. It’s all Apple Watch Ultra, 6 Series and more, and even Apple Watch Se 2.

Similarly, some other features based on software highlighted in Keynote are not exclusive to series 11. The new bracelet feature in Watchos 26 will be supported in series 9 and higher, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Apart from the area of ​​Apple watches, this also applies to the Airpods Pro 3 Also. The live translation function that Apple has introduced with AirPods Pro 3 will actually work with Airpods 4 and AirPods Pro 2, as long as it is associated with an iPhone 15 Pro or more (essentially, your phone needs to take care of Apple Intelligence). This means that you can use older AirPods to translate the word from several careful languages, without gushing for a new $ 250 AirPod Pro.