A new report by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman says Apple is testing a native sleep tracking app for a future model of the Apple Watch.
The company has been using the sleep-tracking feature for several months with testers at secret sites around its Cupertino, California, headquarters, according to people familiar with the work. If the functionality is successful in the testing stages, the company plans to add it to the Apple Watch by 2020, according to one of the people. The company has released new versions of the Apple Watch each fall since 2016.
The addition of sleep-tracking capabilities to the Apple Watch would allow it to compete on that level with wearables offered by companies like Fitbit. Apple’s wrist-rider has never offered native sleep monitoring features mainly due to its advertised 18 battery life. Many users charge the device on their nightstand overnight as they sleep.
However, increased battery life in the last few models of the Watch has led third-party developers to release sleep-tracking apps for the wearable.
A future Apple Watch could have improved battery life, enabling wearing of the device while sleeping. As pointed out by Gurman, the new sleep tracking feature could also include a new low-power mode mode to reduce the amount of power used by the device.