An Update on Heart Analyzer
I thought that now version 7 of Heart Analyzer is out along side iOS 13 and WatchOS 6, it was a good time to reflect as well as provide an update on the plans for the future.
The main aim of version 7 was to dramatically increase the data available to new users as well as improve the clarity and the accessibility of the app for users of all experience level.
As a reminder, we introduced:
A new Heart Home
Monthly Heart Reports in an exportable PDF format
Support for VO2Max and Heart Rate Variability
An improved Dashboard with a new card design
Updated Metrics and Deep Analytics graphs
Support for Workout Zones and Heart Rate Recovery
Listed as coming soon to the wrist!
We’ll get back to that last one, but for now I just want to touch on the others. The new Heart Home has been a fantastic success and users are loving the Heart Reports. I’m really keen to continue to get feedback but an option for expanding Heart Reports in the future would be through having a second page with more advanced analytics, potentially straying into heuristic detail might be on the table. The data that the Apple Watch produces is so powerful, who knows what will be possible as people build up a greater history of health data.
All the other features introduced in V7 have received great feedback. However, I think some users may still not find the Dashboard as clear and visually pleasing as it could be. I’m always looking for new ways to clearly show the user each day of data in a scrollable form to allow then to go back through it. I think there may be better ways to achieve this, although it will require significant redesign and overhaul next year.
Back to that missing feature on the wrist. Yes, we are planning on releasing a brand new Watch app in November. For those more in the developer world, Apple introduced SwiftUI this year and the potential for the watch is astounding. We’ve already done some amazing mockups of a new app for the Watch with great graphs and short concise metrics for your day. It’s because of this that we will be adopting this new technology and the Watch app will be WatchOS 6 only. Luckily, all devices that support WatchOS 5 also support 6 but this does still seem like a steep requirement to expect. I hope that the results will be worth is for our users. We’re looking forward to starting public testing at the end of October, please get in touch if you’re interested. The iPhone app will continue to support iOS 12, although to install the Watch app you’ll need to be running iOS 13.
We will also be adding support for the new Always On display in the Apple Watch Series 5. This should make it clearer for customers to keep up with heart rate on the go. I’m excited by the hardware Apple announced this year, although I do keep my fingers ever crossed for continuous heart rate reading one day, or possibly just a bump up from around every 5 minutes readings to every minute. I appreciate this would have a battery life impact, but it would add even more to apps like Heart Analyzer that display the data.
I just want to address our recent version 7.1 release. This update brings support for the latest iOS 13 and WatchOS 6 update which include a lot of changes. We have had a small number of users experiencing issues here. Please do bear with us, we’re learning as you do of all the changes to the system and new hardware. We hope to have a fix release out really soon to address this.
Finally, I just want to mention Fitness Friend and Helix Apps. Heart Analyzer’s success has caused Fitness Friend to be slightly neglected int he past 12 months. We hope to release a bug fix update soon and with any luck we’ll get the time next year to work on a new version of that app including support for new health types. As for Helix Apps, this is now the sole proprietor of Heart Analyzer and Fitness Friend. We have exciting plans for the future including ideas for a fantastic new app, if only we get the time!
All the best
Simon