SAFA Skysailor Magazine

52 SKY SAILOR September-October-November | SPRING 2025 From here on, I’m going to be talking about the Samsung-centric Android device ecosystem. You’ll probably get similar results if you start looking Apple/iOS, or other devices such as offerings from Suunto, Garmin (49 watches with Pulse Ox) or others. With the watch connected to my Android smartphone by Bluetooth, I can access the sensors via the Samsung Health and Health Monitor apps. From the Health app I can initiate the SPO2 measurement. This is handy, particularly if you use your smartphone in your cockpit, as initiating the measurement from the watch in flight could be problematic; it’s a fiddly process with gloves on and your watch up several layers of arm sleeves. For the measurement to be effective with this watch you need to hold your wrist up at your heart location and stay still. In other words, take a hand off your control bar or grab both brakes in one hand, and then stay still. Yeah, ok… How does the watch compare with the fingertip device? There’s a fair bit of vari- ance just sitting at my desk… Just a minute apart, the watch returns two readings, 93% and 90%, and then Hypoxia – 2025 Refresh Figure 3: SPO2 measurement process