Heads up, Fitbit Ionic and Versa owners: Fitbit OS 3.0 is here, bringing along a bunch of new features that make both of Fitbit's flagship smartwatches extra useful.
For starters, the updated operating system brings support for more third-party apps, such as Couch to 5K and Achu Health — the former is a popular training program that aims to coax beginning runners from being a couch potato to eventually running five miles; the latter is an app that measures the user's body for odd temperature spikes unrelated to exercise as a way to predict potential illnesses.
More partner apps will arrive next year, according to Fitbit, including TRX, Gold's Gym, and Mindbody. Fitbit's app marketplace sure isn't as robust and diverse as that of the Apple Watch's, but these apps are certainly a great start.
Fitbit OS 3.0 New Features
Apart from expanded third-party app support, Fitbit OS 3.0 also brings features centered on improved fitness logging. With this new update, users can now more quickly log their water intake, sleep, and weight straight from the watch — no need to pull out the mobile app anymore.
Information is now more easily glanced as well. There's now a detailed exercise view, for example, that displays hourly activity, heart rate, and sleep data without much fuss. Plus, Fitbit plans to add menstrual cycle trends in 2019 to help women track their reproductive cycles more efficiently.
Development Kits
The more crucial updates can't be seen on the front end, however. Under the hood, Fitbit has introduced new Exercise and Scientific programming kits which developers can use to build fitness, health, and research apps that use their own algorithms. Clearly, Fitbit is laying the groundwork to further bolster its app situation. That'll take a long time, of course, and a little bit of luck. Apple currently has the upper hand in wearables in terms of market share, but as always in the tech landscape, things can change, and quickly.
Case in point: Fitbit has finally returned to profitability following a string of losses and poor sales performance. To keep this up, Fitbit needs to keep loyal customers around, and one way of doing that is by introducing upgrades that expand its smartwatches' feature set greatly.
Have you tried Fitbit OS 3.0? Any thoughts on the new update so far? As always, if you have any thoughts, feel free to sound them off in the comments section below!
