14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s upcoming watchOS 9 operating system update will bring lots of improvements to the Apple Watch, and one of the most important concerns swimming.
If you’ve ever used the Apple Watch to monitor your swimming, you probably know already that the device can do this easily, though it only provides basic information.
Apple knows this is an area that needs to be improved as soon as possible, especially as other devices on the market, including the ones from Garmin, already offer advanced swimming tracking.
This is why watchOS 9 will come with massive improvements on this front, including not only kickboard detection but also a SWOLF score.
Already available on Garmin smartwatches, the SWOLF score is calculated by taking into account the stroke count and the time needed to complete a length of the pool.
“Kickboard detection has been added as a new stroke type for Pool Swim workouts, using sensor fusion on Apple Watch to automatically detect when users are swimming with a kickboard and classify the stroke type in the workout summary along with distance swam. Swimmers can now track their efficiency with a SWOLF score — a stroke count combined with the time, in seconds, it takes to swim one length of the pool. Users can view their SWOLF average for each set in the workout summary,” Apple explains.
The big question is what devices are going to support these swimming enhancements.
With a new Apple Watch due in the fall, it’s pretty clear this model will come with all the bells and whistles announced in watchOS 9. But on the other hand, given the Apple Watch Series 4 will also support the new operating system, it’ll be interesting to see if these new features, including the kickboard detection and the SWOLF score, will also be available on this old model.