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Comment by option_greek | Hacker News Reader

Is this specific to apple watch ? Are the other fitness trackers not suited for this ?

I think the “30 second finger ECG sampling” is unique to the Apple Watch. Most modern continuous trackers use optical heart rate (PPG) alone. Garmin includes a red light PPG that is used as a Pulse Oximeter during sleep to measure SpO2 and they also continuously monitor Heart Rate Variability (HRV) that they report as stress. Garmin also uses machine learning models to predict sleep stages with PPG data without an EEG.

All of these consumer grade sensors are poor compared to the medical PPG, ECG, and EEG equivalents but they have the advantage of being ubiquitous and continuous. They offer the ability to collect a baseline for our health data that is supplemented with short samples during exceptional events.

> I think the “30 second finger ECG sampling” is unique to the Apple Watch.

Check out AliveCor. They had an Apple watch band that provided similar functionality before Apple offered it directly.

Apple Watch is the only mainstream fitness tracker watch that does ECGs to my knowledge (but I’ve honestly not looked extensively), but AliveCor had a product on the market before Apple offering a similar function on Apple Watch (via a watch band w/ sensor), so Apple’s marketing claims of being first are dubious at best. I prefer the Apple Watch version over AliveCor’s by far, but it’s certainly not the only option, let alone the first.

My main beef with AliveCor is the fact that the sensor can pop out of the watch band and when it does and you don’t notice, you’re out $200 (as in my case). It also isn’t as good a user experience, but that’s not a blocking factor to me in this case, just the triviality of losing an expensive sensor which is barely held in by a piece of flexible material.

Withings move ECG is another popular fitness tracker with ECG functionality sold €130.

https://www.withings.com/no/en/move-ecg

> Withings move ECG is another popular fitness tracker with ECG functionality

Hadn’t heard about that one, thanks for sharing. Might work for a family member who won’t wear anything but an analog watch.

Apparently the newest Galaxy Gear watch has the ECG functionality but its not enabled. Last i've heard the waiting to be greenlighted by the FDA to enable it.

Would be great for those of us with an Android phone to have similar options to choose from

I think the Apple watch is (nearly) alone in being FDA-approved as a medical device, and I wouldn't trust anything that isn't. If I didn't need an iPhone to power it I'd buy one in a heartbeat just for health reasons.

> I'd buy one in a heartbeat

I see what you did there.

"FDA-cleared" not approved. There is a huge difference: https://www.cnet.com/news/fda-approved-vs-fda-cleared-whats-...

What is wrong with an iPhone?

Very expensive telephone.

Can get the SE, which is pretty midrange unless you’re comparing it to feature phones.

where i am the SE is 500€. Is a LOT more than the 180€ that i payed my xiaomi. I wouldn't really call it midrange... but i guess it depends where you live?

Considering another 460€ for the watch it become very expensive.

Also not long ago 500€ (here) was considered a notch under top of the line.

edit: as a reference, feature phone extremely rarely surpass the 100€ on amazon and are generically around 50-60€.

edit: fix grammar

Agreed, $500 might be entry level phone in US income money but in Europe(an most of the world) that's a lot of money.

Its not only about can-I-affort-it. Here in Switzerland, most of my IT colleagues have android phones 1-5 years old that were never top of the line and they are fine with them, including me. With salaries that could comfortably afford them latest top apple phones every generation if they wanted.

But why would they do that? Phones are not secure by default, anybody thinking otherwise is naive and uneducated, Apple is not an exception. What else does an Apple phone offer to IT guy that rest doesn't? The answer for most of us, nothing. We just run an app XYZ. And those phones are just fine for that.

SE being no exception to this, its still way pricier than Android counterparts.

Like most of us, for most use cases we don't buy overpriced status things with decent quality, rather stuff that has good price/quality ratio, emphasis more on quality. Same with cars, kitchen, other electronics or generally home equipment, sport equipment and so on.

While true for most people outside of highly skilled western income levels, if you can't afford an iPhone how can you afford the iWatch to go with it?

You just pay with your data when you get something like xiaomi or basically any other phone. On top of that you get a very good phone and about 5-6 years of software updates. I don’t call €500 (SE) very expensive, though it is a lot of money all at once.

No multi-user accounts possible (work/private separation) or something like Samsung Knox. This is stopping me from switching.

My company recently adopted SecureMail, SecureHub and the other Citrix mobile stuff, it seems to sandbox itself from the rest of the system pretty well. It controls which apps you can cut-n-paste between or share links to for example. I think it's uses MDM under the hood to manage data sharing and permissions.

They actually did just introduce support in iOS 13 for a type of MDM which does works roughly like the Google work profile thing.

There is nothing like f-droid possible on the iPhone.

nothing's wrong with them, it's just that I have an Android phone and don't want to get a new phone just for this.

I have both but cannot wear the watch because it gives me a really bad rash. It’s apparently not uncommon.

On which part? Under the watch or the strap? I had a problem with the strap (I sweat a lot) so I got a Nike fabric strap - it breathes a lot, so no effect on my skin.

It should also be noted that there are two types of metal finish on the watch: the aluminium and the stainless steel.

Your sweat could be getting a bit of a current going through it, are there charging contacts near the part of the watch that gives you the rash? Salty water (sweat) and electricity could well be making acid that's causing the rash. Sorry that this isn't really a solution but I find if I don't wear my fitness watch when exercising I don't get rashes.

No, the Apple Watch uses wireless charging so there aren't any exposed contacts that I can see.

There are accessory contacts inside the strap latch. It's possible, though unlikely, that sweat is getting in there.

I had a fitbit back in 2014 and the irritation turned me off of all fitness trackers

In 2019 I got an Apple Watch with stainless steel band and have not had any issues

I had irritation during the first few weeks of wearing my fitbit charge hr but being a bit more diligent about washing it made everything go away.

Which version did you try? That is to say, what metal and which band?

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