Fitbit watches get their first free update of the year, and even better is to come
Quick Summary
Fitbit has released an update to its fitness trackers and smartwatches that will display status indicators as soon as you turn on the screen.
And there's another even bigger feature reportedly coming that's great for sleep too.
We love a software update – whether it's to our phones, tablets or smartwatches – they generally bring a few extra features that make the overall experience better. There's little to complain about there.
The latest devices to get an update worth talking about are Fitbit's Charge 6, Inspire 3, Sense 2 and Versa 4. With the update, the fitness trackers and smartwatches will all display status indicators when you turn on their screens, allowing you to quickly see various details immediately.
The status indicators include a battery icon when your Fitbit device is critically low, a phone with a line through it when your Fitbit device isn't connected to your phone, a moon when sleep mode is activated on your Fitbit devices and an icon to show when do not disturb mode is on.
The update also brings new Bluetooth security features, as reported by 9to5Google. It's said that the Fitbit app will prompt you to forget your tracker and reconnect to benefit from the improvements.
That's not all that's coming to Fitbit devices in the future, though. In a separate report, 9to5Google also revealed that Fitbit Labs is preparing to offer a new "Sleep Need" feature that will give you your "ideal bedtime and wake up times".
The feature was discovered through an APK Insight, and so isn't confirmed by Fitbit as yet. But if it does arrive, it looks like the Google-owned brand will attempt to offer a personalised sleep schedule.
Also according to the report, the new function will incorporate three aspects, which will include you answering a few questions during the day about how you feel at different times. It is then said to use your responses and data to detail how much sleep you need every night. As 9to5Google says: "You'll get a personalised bedtime and wake time recommendation to help you get the sleep you need."
It's said there will be morning, midday and evening surveys, with the midday option asking about your energy levels. The feature will then apparently tell you how much sleep you need, detail your sleep debt and give an explanation on how it came to the calculation.
You will need to wear your Fitbit device for five days to get more accurate data, and once your bedtime and wake up time is calculated, the app will recommend changing your alarm to reflect what has been suggested.
As mentioned, there is no word on when this feature might appear as yet. It is claimed to have been found in version 4.37 of Fitbit for Android, but it's not currently live in the app, so fingers crossed for this one.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNET
9 hours ago
- CNET
My Favorite Wireless Keyboard Is Worth Every Penny of the $100 It Costs
Over a decade ago, Logitech made the perfect keyboard for my needs: the K810. It was a compact tenkeyless wireless keyboard with Bluetooth and backlit keys. While those two boxes are far from hard to check off today, they were at the time. Best of all, I loved that I could seamlessly switch the keyboard to up to three different devices by just tapping a key. It wasn't perfect, though. The biggest downside of the K810 was its build quality. While it wasn't bad, it didn't feel super solid. As time went on, it became increasingly hard to find, and Logitech had discontinued it by 2019. I wasn't alone in missing it, either. You can find plenty of old Reddit posts looking for alternatives or pleas to Logitech to rerelease the K810. I found myself buying at least two used or refurbished K810s from eBay since Logitech hadn't produced a proper replacement. Finally, Logitech introduced a true successor to the K810 in 2021. The Logitech MX Keys Mini was nearly everything any K810 owner could want in a successor. It has the same compact and minimal design, backlit keys that are more comfortable to type on, easy switching to other devices, a much-needed upgrade to USB-C for charging, and a solid build quality that goes toe-to-toe with Apple's Magic Keyboard. In fact, I have no problem recommending the Keys Mini over Apple's equivalent offering any day of the week. The Keys Mini typically comes with a $100 price tag that might be a hard pill to swallow for some, but if you're like me and spend several hours a day using a keyboard (and, yes, I'm typing this on my Keys Mini), the price is justified. If you're not a keyboard snob and just need a keyboard for casual use, I'd still recommend the MX Keys Mini. Typing on it is a great experience, especially if you like a minimal and compact layout. The Keys Mini isn't going to impress someone looking for a gaming keyboard, but if that's what you're in the market for, we have you covered with our best gaming keyboards for 2025. Why I like the Logitech MX Keys Mini keyboard The MX Keys Mini has a lot going for it. The backlit keys automatically turn off when I'm not using the keyboard and turn on as my hands approach it. Its ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the brightness of the keys to my current lighting conditions, though I can also manually adjust this as well. The surface of the keys themselves are slightly concave, so typing on them feels great. I love this keyboard so much that I have two of them. David Carnoy/CNET I also love the battery life. Logitech's website claims the Keys Mini will last up to 10 days on a single charge or up to five months with the backlighting turned off. That seems to undersell it. Even with daily use, I don't find myself having to charge the keyboard more than once a month. The top row of keys comes with some standard and not-so-standard abilities. The expected multimedia, volume, Esc and Del keys are present, along with the three easy switch buttons to change the Bluetooth connection to another device I've already paired to and the backlight intensity keys. The keyboard has a useful and dedicated dictation key, a mic mute/unmute key and an emoji key to open the emoji window for supported apps. While I can't say I've ever used the emoji key, I love the idea that enough typists want something like this and that Logitech included it. The MX Keys Mini is about two-thirds the size of MX Keys. David Carnoy/CNET Available in both Windows
Geek Wire
11 hours ago
- Geek Wire
Hubble Network launches Bluetooth satellite system for tracking your devices from orbit
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . An artist's conception shows one of Hubble Network's satellites in orbit. (Hubble Network illustration) A Seattle space startup called Hubble Network is unveiling a system that uses satellites and low-power Bluetooth signals to monitor devices and sensors around the globe. The system, known as the Hubble BLE Finding Network, can open the way for applications ranging from locating lost pets to monitoring supply chains and watching out for wildfires, Hubble Network CEO and co-founder Alex Haro said. 'Agriculture, oil and gas, mining, defense … There are all these important verticals and industries where there is need for this very battery- and cost-efficient network that can have global accessibility,' Haro told GeekWire. Hubble's network could be regarded as a low-cost, low-power GPS alternative for Bluetooth devices. Over the past decade, consumers have become familiar with finding services such as Apple's 'Find My' app and Google's 'Find My Device.' Before he helped found Hubble Network in 2021, Haro himself had a hand in creating the Life360 finding service, which makes use of Bluetooth trackers known as Tiles. His current venture literally adds another dimension to the concept, by going up to low Earth orbit. Haro and his fellow co-founders created Hubble Network (which has nothing to do with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope) to get around the limitations of today's most commonly used Bluetooth-based tracking devices. The most obvious limitation has to do with range. 'The reason that you and pretty much everyone else thinks about Bluetooth as being so short-range is, that's really what the Bluetooth protocol was designed for,' Haro said. 'It's meant for high-fidelity audio streaming from your computer to your headphones, and so it's operating at millions of bits per second.' Hubble Network's system turns the dials down on a Bluetooth device's data transmission rate and energy consumption, using a protocol known as Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE. The company also developed patented technologies for sending messages across distances ranging as far as hundreds of miles — far enough for the messages to be picked up by phased-array antennas on Hubble Network's satellites in space. Haro compared the approach to enunciating a message quietly and carefully, and repeating the message to make sure it's heard correctly, as opposed to shouting the message as loud as possible. 'On top of that, we give your friend hundreds of microphones that are all focusing their spot beams on you,' he said. 'That's what allows it to pick up that directed energy and be able to hear you, even with a lot of other noise happening all around you.' In collaboration with Spire Global, Hubble Network's first two satellites were launched last year, and the Bluetooth space connection was successfully tested just weeks after that initial launch. Now the Hubble Network constellation has grown to seven satellites. (The four newest satellites are nicknamed Lilo and Stitch, Scooby and Shaggy.) The company aims to expand its constellation to 60 satellites by 2028. Hubble Network's business model calls for adding satellite connectivity to existing tracking applications that are offered by other companies — including Life360, which has more than 80 million monthly active users. The Hubble BLE Network can leverage Life360's devices as well as millions of other IoT devices that have embedded BLE chips. Anyone who uses such devices to, say, monitor their supply chains or check up on their crops can sign up to join the network. 'With a simple SDK change on our customers' devices, they can access 100 million gateways, but they also have access to the satellite network,' Haro said. He emphasized that the IoT data is encrypted end-to-end. 'Not even Hubble can tell what our customers' data is,' Haro said. 'It really is owned by our customer. It's the responsibility of our customer to make sure that these products are being used for proper enterprise use cases and not for any forms of harassment or any other bad actors. We're basically acting like a carrier for our customers' devices.' When Haro talks about customers, he's talking about companies that are using — or will be using — Hubble's service to provide low-cost satellite connectivity for their Bluetooth devices. It's up to those companies to decide how their customers will cover the cost of the service, or how they'll account for the cost internally. 'We have a number of customers that are currently in the pilot phase and are converting over to contracted customers,' Haro said. 'So we will have some hopefully fun announcements over the next few months.' Four years into its existence, Hubble Network has about 50 employees, including about 35 in Seattle and a 'big contingent in the Bay Area,' according to Haro. He said the company has officially brought in $30 million in investment so far, highlighted by a $20 million Series A funding round in 2023. The months ahead are likely to bring further developments on the business frontier as well as on the final frontier. In more ways than one, when it comes to Hubble Network's future, watch this space.
Forbes
13 hours ago
- Forbes
Smart Today, Scrap Tomorrow: How Belkin Has Broken The Promise Of IoT
Back in 2020, I wrote here on Forbes about Belkin's decision to brick its NetCam product and abandon the customers who bought into it.I asked at the time whether the brand could ever be trusted again?Five years on, they've has answered that question themselves. A Belkin Wemo Insight Switch smart plug, taken on August 16, 2017. (Photo by Olly Curtis/T3 ... More Magazine/Future via Getty Images) Belkin dropped the bomb to customers last week confirming it will end its support for their Wemo smart home device range on 31st January 2026. No workaround, no software updates, and no plan to hand over control to users. Just a shutdown notice and lots more raw material for devices don't have a serious flaw; they haven't failed, but they are about to cease to function for their intended purpose because Belkin simply no longer wants to support the infrastructure they depend on. It's a business decision that will affect millions of users*And that's the flaw at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT) dream that brands bought into in the early 2010s – the moment a company decides your connected product is no longer worth their time or money, it simply becomes when manufacturers like Belkin turned 'dumb' products into smart solutions, they took on a responsibility – maintaining a connected infrastructure. Now, instead of owning the problem, they're walking away from it. And in their case, they've done this for a second was never supposed to be like in those heady smart-home days of 2013/14, and in many previous waves before that, we were promised a smarter world: intelligent homes, effortless automation and seamless integration. But it's now clear that many companies treated the opportunities presented by IoT like any other consumer electronics trend – a sales opportunity to exploit rather than true innovation and a long-term commitment to previous waves of devices that promised smarthome utopia, this time the dropping of support permanently renders the devices TRS-80 from 1977 had a 'Plug'n Power" add-on. It provides the same functionality as the Wemo, but 48 years later functions exactly as well as it did the day it was new.I also have a 1996-era 'Home Director' system from IBM. Running Windows 95, it's not a practical solution to control my home30 years later, but it still works exactly as difference? The 21st Century era devices are all 'Cloud Tethered' - taking us all a step closer to Technofeudalism and the antithesis of utopian automation that is the dream of enthusiasts of this is aware that severing the Cloud Tethering is 'change [that] may disrupt your routines'. As someone who owns 41 Wemo smart plugs, I'm painfully preparing for this disruption. I've invested a huge amount of time and money installing and configuring their system. They work in perfect harmony and have done so flawlessly for over a decade. But now I must spend an entire weekend or more of transferring to their Zigbee/ Zwave equivalents. My 'digital housework' workload is about to become a major challenge. It's the digital equivalent of the roof falling in. Except I've got 6-months to prepare, but no-one except me who can fix it (and no insurance to come to my rescue)! Close-up photograph of a white, "Wemo" brand plug, used to control home electronics remotely, San ... More Ramon, California, USA, November 3, 2018 There is some 'good' news. Belkin has learnt lessons from the NetCam debacle by providing more time to switch. But I believe there's a better way of doing things:Belkin clearly knows this announcement won't land well either — the email includes three separate apologies. But instead of hiding behind vague corporate language, they'd have done better to be honest. Imagine if they had written:'Back in 2011, we saw a market opportunity and launched Wemo. In hindsight, we underestimated the complexity of supporting a smart home ecosystem. We now realise we can't sustain the Wemo platform long-term. That's why we're giving you three years to transition to a new system. We're truly sorry to let you down – reliability and trust are core to our brand, and we know we've fallen short.'And imagine if they went further: 'And as part of our end-of-life programme for these smart devices, we're releasing one final firmware update which will open the protocols used to connect to the Wemo device and allow you to control it via third-party applications. We'll be updating the Wemo app also to make it easier for your transition to another system, and hope that these devices continue to function for years, or even decades to come. With a vibrant open-source smarthome community such as those provided by Domoticz and other groups - we're confident that your investment in these product and our brand will not have been wasted.'Or further still?'Oh, and we're releasing the Wemo source code on GitHub so the opensource community can build and improve on the foundations we've laid. And we're providing full schematics and technical documentation to iFixit so that the repair community can keep our excellently designed and crafted Wemo devices in service for the long term. After all, our organization is made up of people who want to leave the planet a better place for our children and future generations. We remain forever and authentically passionate about renewing our commitment to a circular economy and carbon neutrality and continuing our pledge to support the Paris Agreement.'Well, the last sentence is actually a genuine quote from their CEO, Steve Malony a few years back. His commitments are perhaps not as authentic or long-lasting as they might have been decision to brick more of its devices is just the latest example of a broader industry blind spot. It's a failure to respect the long-term obligations of smart infrastructure. It also flies in the face of the environmental promises many tech companies like to make. I'm now soon to be left with a pile of perfectly usable devices destined for landfill, purely because of lazy software engineering, and poor business decision to retire these Wemo products will certainly create a huge amount of e-waste, but I dread to think the impact that a decision by Amazon or Philips will have when they bring to an end their own smart home products like Alexa and Hue simple business decision has major environmental impact and leave millions of customers with the task of 'upgrading' to a new system. In the case of Amazon - they have somewhere towards 100-200x more smartdevices in the market than Belkin did with the Wemo. Let's hope they act more responsibly when the time we want a sustainable, trustworthy, and truly 'smart' future for our homes, this isn't it. I just hope we get there before the IoT dream is shattered for all time. Trust in Belkin might be shot, but there is still opportunity for others to get this right. * Google Play store confirms the Wemo happ has been downloaded 1M+ times. Based on the 56.9k reviews (mostly negative), and a 1:50 download to review ratio: this leave us with an estimated number of 2.8M users globally. Assuming Google Play devices have a market share of 70%, we can therefore extrapolate there to be approximately 4M Wemo users globally. ** I of course approached Belkin for comment on this story before publishing, but at time of writing there are still *crickets* from their press team. If they squeak, I'll be sure to update.
