Google has confirmed that the Fitbit Air, its screenless fitness tracker, will get sleep breathing quality, closing off weeks of confusion over whether the feature would ever reach the device.
The mix-up started after Google rolled out its Health Guardian suite to Pixel Watch 3, 4 and 5 owners in early October. That update added insulin resistance trends, blood pressure trends and sleep breathing quality. Google said at the time that the features would eventually land on Fitbit Air too, but its own store pages told a different story. The comparison chart on the Google Store listed sleep breathing quality as a Pixel Watch exclusive, and the Google Health app displayed "Not available on this tracker" whenever Fitbit Air owners tried to check their breathing data.
That was enough to worry people who'd bought the band expecting the same health tools as the smartwatch. Google has now told Android Authority otherwise.
"Sleep Breathing Quality launched first on Pixel Watches and will come to Fitbit Air soon," a company spokesperson said in a statement to the publication.
No firm date yet
The statement settles the question of whether the feature is coming, but not when. Google hasn't given a release date for sleep breathing quality on Fitbit Air, so owners are stuck waiting without a timeline.
The feature itself works by tracking overnight blood oxygen variations and running them through an algorithm to estimate how long someone's breathing stayed in a normal range while asleep. It's not a medical diagnosis. Google is explicit that it can't detect sleep apnea, only flag patterns that might be worth a closer look.
There's a catch for Fitbit Air owners that doesn't apply to Pixel Watch wearers: sleep breathing quality, along with blood pressure trends and insulin resistance trends, sits behind a Google Health Premium subscription on the band. Pixel Watch owners get the same data without paying extra, at least for now.
What about the Fitbit Edge
Google's statement doesn't mention the Fitbit Edge, a device expected to share the same internals as both the Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch. Given that overlap, there's a reasonable case that the Edge picks up sleep breathing quality on arrival rather than waiting for a later update. The Edge is said to be close to launch, so if Google times things right, breathing trends could ship with the device out of the box instead of arriving as an afterthought.
For now, Fitbit Air owners have official word that the feature is coming, which is more than they had a week ago, even if the actual rollout date is still anyone's guess. Whether Google treats this as a quiet software update or makes any announcement when it lands remains to be seen.
GDFiled by The Gadgets Desk
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