Fitbit has announced that it will make some of its Fitbit Premium subscription features available for free to all Fitbit customers, including those who use the services with their Pixel Watches.
Although the update is effective right away, it can take until the end of the month for all users to receive it as per a report by DC Rain Maker.
Users Will Get Insights On Their Health For Free
The requirement to pay the $10 monthly fee in order to view past data has long been one of users' greatest qualms with Fitbit products.
For instance, if customers did not pay, they could only view 90 days' worth of everything else and up to seven days' worth of their breathing rate, resting heart rate, and heart rate fluctuation.
It was a major flaw in gadgets like the Pixel Watch, especially in light of the fact that rival goods from Apple and Samsung do not lock users' own data behind a paywall.
Today, Google revealed that it will make more of the useful information from the Fitbit Health Metrics Dashboard available to all of its customers without a subscription.
According to Fitbit, all users will now have free access to all data in the "Fitbit Health Metrics Dashboard," including trends for both 30-day and 90-day time periods.
Engadget writes that the following are the data which will be available following the update:
Breathing rate: This metric is the number of breaths you take per minute.
Heart-rate variability (HRV): This metric is the variation in time between heartbeats.
Skin temperature: This metric is the variation in your skin temperature taken from your wrist while you sleep.
Oxygen saturation (SpO2): This metric estimates the amount of oxygen in your blood, and will only be available on compatible devices.
Resting heart rate (RHR): This metric is the number of times your heart beats per minute when you are still and well-rested.
The information described above was displayed in the Health Metrics dashboard as daily, weekly, monthly, or 90-day summaries.
However, more fundamental measures like step count, kilometers traveled, calories burnt, and heart rate have always been free, DC Rain Maker notes.
Certain services, like Fitbit is Daily Readiness Score, which analyzes a variety of data layers, including sleep and exercise history, to determine if users should work out or take a nap, remain Premium.
Read More: Fitbit Will Soon Require Google Accounts for its Wearables
Fitbit Is On Track To Being At Par With Competition
Although customers may only view their historical activity for those measures going back a maximum of 90 days, this at least puts Fitbit products on par with those of the competitors.
The company does have industry health and sleep-tracking tools, such as the ability to monitor how much time you spend during the night in different sleep stages like REM, deep sleep, and light sleep.
Although Sleep Profile, Guided Sleep Programs, Snore Detect, and other insights into what is affecting users' Sleep Score are currently locked behind Premium, information like those sleep stages are not.
In light of Apple's recent addition of the same feature to watchOS and Samsung's long-standing availability of Sleep Stages, it is a good thing that Fitbit is no longer behind paywalls for its users.
Yet, both rivals provide their consumers this for free, along with additional sleep measurements and advice, Engadget details.
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