Health sensors on Google wearables are malfunctioning at a strange moment

Google launched the Fitbit Air yesterday, giving its wearables lineup a refreshed screenless tracker and a new entry point into its revamped health platform. But the company is also getting some less welcome feedback from another corner of its wearable ecosystem, as some Pixel Watch owners say the recent update broke SpO2 and skin temperature tracking on their current devices.

This issue was raised in a Reddit thread r/pixelwatchWhere the Pixel Watch 3 owner said that a recent Fitbit update had reset permissions for skin temperature and SpO2 tracking. The user said they couldn’t turn the permissions back on, as the permissions page showed no apps were requesting them. Some other commenters in the thread reported similar problems.

Google’s PixelCommunity account replied in threadAcknowledging that “We are sorry for the disruption to your health tracking experience caused by these permission resets.” It added that “work is underway to restore access to SpO2 and skin temperature tracking features.”

a separate r/fitbit The thread shows that the problem is not limited to the Pixel Watch 3. In that post, the Pixel Watch 4 owner said that the same sensors have stopped showing up in the Pixel Watch and Fitbit apps for over a week. fitbithelpcommunity replied later With almost the same message, again pointing to the same firmware update and saying that work is underway to restore access.

We don’t know how widespread this problem is, and it appears that the user in the Fitbit thread has fixed it by restarting their device. However, official replies make it clear that Google and Fitbit are aware of the genuine permissions-related issue associated with the recent update, which isn’t ideal timing as Google is trying to convince more people to buy into its health-tracking ecosystem.