Hot stuff: Apple Watch Series 8 might be able to take your temperature

What you need to know

• A new series of tweets by Ming-Chi Kuo suggests Apple could add temperature monitoring to Apple Watch Series 8.
• Apple was previously expected to add the same sensor to Apple Watch Series 7 but pulled the plug.
• Kuo believes Apple may be able to fix the issues and ship this year.

Your Apple Watch might gain a new sensor this year after all.

The upcoming AppleApple Watch Series 8 might be capable of measuring your body temperature, according to a new report. But only if Apple has been able to iron out the kinks that prevented the same feature from shipping in last year’s model.

Rumors of a similar feature were flying around ahead of last year’s Apple Watch Series 7 release but that ultimately didn’t make the cut — the same can be said for that big case redesign, too. But a new series of tweets by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests that the Apple Watch Series 8 might be able to offer the feature when it lands later this year. With one big caveat — it’ll only ship if Apple has been able to fix the problems it wasn’t able to overcome a year ago.

Apple canceled body temperature measurement for Apple Watch 7 because the algorithm failed to qualify before entering EVT stage last year. I believe Apple Watch 8 in 2H22 could take body temperature if the algorithm can meet Apple’s high requirements before mass production.

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The challenge in implementing precise body temperature measurement is that skin temperature quickly varies depending on outside environments. A smartwatch can’t support core temperature measurement in terms of hardware, so it needs an excellent algorithm to work together.— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) May 1, 2022

Whether Apple will actually pull that off remains to be seen. Kuo also points out that Apple isn’t the only one struggling with this feature — Samsung is also trying to get a body temperature sensor into its own wearable and it might not manage it. Could Apple fare better?

While the idea of measuring the temperature of something that an Apple Watch is touching might seem easy at first blush, Kuo points out that the rapidly-changing environmental temperature makes for difficulty in acquiring accurate readings. As has been the case before, Apple will only add the feature if it is confident in its ability to do what it is supposed to do, when it needs to do it.

If the new watch does gain a new sensor, it would be counter to what we’ve been hearing of late. Recent reports by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested no new sensors would be added this time around.

Regardless, this year is sure to give us the best Apple Watch yet with Apple also reportedly ready to ship a rugged version of the wearable for the first time.