Apple Watch Series 8: Latest rumors and speculation

Death, taxes and an Apple Watch Series 8 in September – perhaps the few certainties in life.

While Apple never tells you another Watch is coming, we think it’s pretty safe to assume that a new Apple Watch will likely land in September 2022, just as it’s done for the 7 years previously.

Naming convention suggests it’ll be the Apple Watch Series 8, but Apple could always spring a surprise and change things up.

The Apple Watch Series 7 saw Apple switch things up with new case sizes and larger screens. But much of what was rumored about the Series 7 didn’t come to fruition .

We’ve already been keeping a close eye on the biggest rumors and speculation to get a sense of what the new Apple Watch Series 8 could be packing.

The Apple Watch gets rugged

Rumor of a rugged Apple Watch actually emerged before the launch of the Series 7 in 2021 via Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who has a great track record with Apple rumors and news.

He still believes a rugged Watch is still on the cards for 2022, and could launch alongside Series 8 and Watch SE 2 watches.

The new rugged Apple Watch is tipped to be for extreme sports, increasing scratch resistance, and we imagine it’ll likely have to ramp up the water rating beyond the WR50.

Pixel Watch rumors and speculation

With the Watch Series 7, Apple added more protective glass and upgraded to an IP6X dust resistance rating.

So could this pave the way for a tougher watch to eat into the sales of Garmin and Polar’s rugged outdoor watches?

Wareable rumor rating: Where there’s smoke there’s fire – but with the Series 7 adding better scratch resistance, it seems hard to believe.

Glucose tracking in testing

If Apple manages to pull this one off it would herald a pretty major breakthrough for a smartwatch for both health monitoring and fitness reasons.

In late 2021, there was chatter via a report on DigiTimes that Apple had started testing non-nvasive blood glucose tracking for use on future Watches.

That report suggests tech outfits Ennostar and Taiwan Asia Semiconductor are developing the technology to enable those non-invasive tracking capabilities, which revolves around infrared sensors that will apparently use “wavelengths above 1,000 nm” and a photodiode to interpret blood glucose levels.

We know that Apple has been filing glucose patents for a while now and has been linked to Rockley Photonics, a sensor company, that’s developed a reference platform that it says is capable of non-invasively tracking ‘glucose trends’ with similar sensor technology.

Again, testing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to make the Watch cut, but if it does, it would be huge.

Wareable rumor rating: It feels too early for glucose tracking to land – even if it is in testing. But blood pressure could be far more realistic.

Taking your temperature

Another rumor that emerged pre-Apple Watch Series 7 launch, again from Mark Gurman, claimed that a body temperature sensor was meant to be included in last year’s Watch. Gurman then said it would feature in a Watch in 2022.

We’ve started to see body and skin temperature sensors appear in a range of wearables including the Fitbit Sense, the Oura Ring 3 and the Whoop 4.0.

It’s also appeared in watches from Huawei, Mobvoi and Amazfit too.

A reliable temperature sensor can offer insights into cold or illness – and can be a game changer for understanding mensural cycles and fertility tracking. The latter would be a brilliant addition to the Apple Watch – and it doesn’t feel too far stretched.

We’ve seen in the past that Apple will hold back on features until it feels the sensor can be used reliably. The most recent comments by Gurman suggests that might be the case here, but it also feels like a natural evolution that could benefit a large section of the Apple Watch user base.

We’d love to see this metric given the Apple treatment, given how poorly temperature tracking has been implemented on rivals.

Wareable rumor rating: It feels like a no-brainer to us.

Apple upgrades sleep tracking

When Apple announced its own native sleep tracking support in 2020, it offered a reliable, but largely simplistic approach to monitoring your bed time.

In watchOS 8, it introduced the ability to measure respiratory rate, which could be a metric that could help detect signs associated with sleep disorder sleep apnea. Though, like most wearable makers, Apple isn’t say this feature is for medical use.Apple’s sleep tracking skills looks rife for improvements and some are pointing to the move by Apple’s decision to stop selling Beddit sleep monitors.

Apple acquired the sleep tracking company back in 2017 and if you now head to the Beddit homepage or try to buy one of directly from Apple.com, they’re no longer available.

The Beddit hardware was capable of capturing sleep duration, respiration rate, snoring, heart rate, bedroom humidity and temperature.

We’d like to think that Apple isn’t going to put the sleep smarts it acquired to waste. We’ve already seen that respiration rate tracking appear on the Watch, so maybe more metrics are on the way too.

Wareable rumor rating: Apple has the technology – it’s likely to be improved.

Car crash detection

It seems we see stories on an almost regular basis of the Apple Watch coming to the rescue for wearers, whether it’s helped raise the alarm for someone that’s had a fall or pointed to the signs of a potentially serious heart health issue.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is seeking to offer more ways its Watch could prove valuable in a potentially life-threatening scenario.

A report by Rolfe Winkler in late 2021, suggests that the publication has seen documents and spoken to people familiar with a car crash detection feature that seems to be an evolution of its existing fall detection feature, which will be rolled out for iPhones and the Apple Watch.

Apparently, the feature would use the accelerometer motion sensor already baked into the Watch to measure a sudden spike in G-Force.

Apple has already been testing the feature, collecting data shared anonymously and it has already detected more than 10 million suspected vehicle impacts.

It’s said to have made use of 911 call data tied to incidents to improve the algorithm and accuracy of the feature to make sure it reliably identifies when a crash takes place.

The report also suggests that Apple could choose not to release it, and we’re sure that with a feature that could prove a life-saving one, it will want to make sure there’s no margin for error in how it works on its Watches.

Wareable rumor rating: Apple’s been busy on its Fall Detection tech, so this does seem likely.