ECG capabilities, available with the Apple Watch Series 4 and later, allow users to quickly take an ECG by simply placing their finger on the Digital Crown and staying still for 30 seconds. Before the feature launches in countries, Apple must retain regulatory approval from the country's respective and appropriate authorities. The feature first launched in the U.S. in 2018 with the Apple Watch Series 4, following FDA approval.
watchOS 8.3 and iOS 15.2 are currently available to developers and public beta testers and can be expected to be launched publicly in the near future. iOS 15.2 includes several new features, including a redesigned Notification Summary, the Apple Music Voice Plan, Legacy Contacts, and more.
Wednesday October 14, 2026 1:24 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple plans to bring Apple Intelligence to China in iOS 27.3 after two years of regulatory delays, reports Bloomberg. The launch will include basic Apple Intelligence features for things like photo editing, but Siri AI won't be available. Image Playground and the newer version of Genmoji will be missing, plus text generation tools will be limited.
The South China Morning Post today reported...
Thursday October 1, 2026 4:37 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Sales of iPhone 18 Pro models in China were 12% higher in the three days after launching than sales of iPhone 17 Pro models were during their entire first week last year, according to Counterpoint Research.
The strong start helped Apple claim the top spot in the country's smartphone market for the week of September 14 to 20, handing it a 33% share. But the news could get even better for...
Tim Cook is visiting China for the third time this year, with talks in Guangdong focused on expanding Apple's manufacturing and sales operations, the South China Morning Post reports.
This is Cook's first China trip in his capacity as Apple's executive chairman. He moved into the position on September 1 when John Ternus took over as CEO. Apple has said part of Cook's work involves...
One guess is it might be a medical device requirement.
To have it approved per-region, yes, but to do so in a software update? Why not have a server somewhere that answers "I'm in region x requests" with "OK, you're in"?
Strange that they're hardcoding these regions into the OS, rather than having a separate mechanism to decide who gets to use the feature. I guess it's not a huge deal, but rolling out an entire OS upgrade just to add
public bool IsEcgAvailable { switch (user.Region) { case China: // new in 8.3 return true; default: return false; } }
Strange that they're hardcoding these regions into the OS, rather than having a separate mechanism to decide who gets to use the feature. I guess it's not a huge deal, but rolling out an entire OS upgrade just to add
public bool IsEcgAvailable { switch (user.Region) { case China: // new in 8.3 return true; default: return false; } }
seems a bit much.
One guess is it might be a medical device requirement.
