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

I tracked my sleep with a smart display, ring, and watch. This is my favorite

The Oura Ring app on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, showing the Sleep screen.

Since I had a heart attack four years ago, I’ve been on a journey to understand my health. A crucial part of my recovery and focus has been my sleep, and it'smade even more important by the fact that my heart attack took place in the middle of the night while I was fast asleep. Thankfully, I woke up, but our sleep can tell us a lot about our underlying health.

Virtually every wearable now offers some form of sleep tracking, but like most things in technology, not all devices are created equal. Beyond just data, there’s also the question of which is most comfortable to track your sleep, which device gives you the most reliable data, and ultimately, how you can ensure you track your sleep wherever you are.

Mobile

How to transfer your books from Goodreads to StoryGraph

Front page of a book on Onyx BOOX Go 10.3 tablet.

Goodreads has been the only game in town for Android and iOS book-tracking for a long time now, and like most monopolies, it has grown old and fat. Acquired by Amazon in 2013, avid book readers have had lots to complain about in recent years, with the service languishing unloved, with no serious updates and an aging interface. It's been due some serious competition for a long time, and lo and behold, some has arrived. StoryGraph is a book-tracking app that offers everything you'll find on Goodreads but with an algorithm that lets you know about what you might love, and adds features any bibliophile will know are essential — like a Did Not Finish list.

Mobile

The next iOS 18 update is on its way. Here’s what we know

The iPhone 16 sitting on top of orange mums.

When iOS 18.2 released just over a week ago, it unlocked a lot of long-awaited features like Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, and improvements to writing tools. Now, it seems like another update could be just around the corner: version 18.2.1.

MacRumors found evidence of the update in their analytic logs, a source that has supposedly revealed quite a few iOS versions before release. Given that this is a minor update, it isn't likely to come with new features or anything groundbreaking. Instead, it will most likely be targeted at bug fixes, although no specific problems have been named. You should expect this update to drop either in late December or early January, but a year-end release is more likely.