Apple’s new Readiness score is one of the standout health features arriving with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4. Owners of older models aren’t getting the same upgrade.
Readiness is part of Apple’s new Health Sensing System, which takes heart-rate and heart rate variability measurements more frequently. That hardware dependency puts the feature outside the usual watchOS update cycle and gives the newest Apple Watches something older models currently can’t replicate.
Readiness takes the health data Apple Watch already collects and turns it into a daily score from 0 to 10. Sleep and activity are among the signals used to estimate how prepared the body is for the day ahead.
Apple then pairs that score with recommendations such as Recover, Ready, or Go For It. Instead of digging through several health metrics, users get a quicker indication of whether it might be worth pushing harder or easing off.
The catch is that Apple has tied Readiness to the new Health Sensing System. That makes the feature much harder to treat as something that could simply arrive on older Watches through a software update.
Apple doesn’t explicitly say older models are excluded from Readiness, but it only introduces the feature on the Series 12 and Ultra 4, ties it to their new Health Sensing System, and separately notes that not every watchOS 27 feature is available on every supported device.
Still, the gap is noticeable. An older Apple Watch can remain current enough to receive the latest software while missing one of the biggest health additions introduced alongside it.
That distinction makes hardware increasingly important when judging Apple Watch support. Getting the newest watchOS version doesn’t necessarily mean getting every major feature that comes with Apple’s latest hardware.
For people who already pay close attention to sleep and recovery, Readiness could be genuinely useful. Turning several health signals into one score is much easier to glance at than interpreting the underlying data separately.
But it’s still an interpretation of existing health information rather than a new medical capability. An older Apple Watch doesn’t suddenly become obsolete because one score is missing.
Readiness strengthens the case for the Series 12 and Ultra 4, but it probably isn’t enough by itself to justify replacing an otherwise capable Apple Watch.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.