Activate spo2 and skin temperature anytime

[Koreysw]

Just a quick suggestion. You should create apps that can activate the skin temperature and the spo2 when the user wants to. The automatic is good but enabling these features for the user during the day would be quite useful. Thanks.

[Guy_]

@Giampi71  Great post with what APIs are not available [and a lot more besides, inside the current ones, not mentioned]

@Rich_LaueGood point about Premium users. Why can't the APIs that @Giampi71  mentioned be made available to developers but only work as long as you are a premium user?

Not sure that it is in Fitbit's interest to withhold API access because developers can make good clock faces that actually brings value to Fitbit, so without those clock faces Fitbit is losing good marketing.

Still, Fitbit Studio is one of the best marketing decisions they made, allowing users to tailor their watch faces to meet their needs, or find one that does from the excellent Gallery, also a great implementation.

[Giampi71]

@Rich_Laue Garmin Premium? I don't have any info about that

Also you are saying exactly what I'm saying: if Fitbit open the API then everybody could potentially access (via a third party developed app/service) the data that Fitbit is putting behind the paywall.

My comment was just aimed to explain why in my opinion we will never see the API for those data.

[Giampi71]

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@Guy_ wrote:

 Why can't the APIs that @Giampi71  mentioned be made available to developers but only work as long as you are a premium user?

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The implementation wouldn't be easy. If you follow the SDK Development board you could see that practically nothing is being added to facilitate and incentive the life of independent developers. To me it is evident that Fitbit OS is being phased out but I hope to be wrong

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Still, Fitbit Studio is one of the best marketing decisions they made, allowing users to tailor their watch faces to meet their needs, or find one that does from the excellent Gallery, also a great implementation.

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It was potentially a good decision but it suffered a lot by lack of tools, for example there is no UI graphical tool, a developer tool for bug tracking and installation stats, monetization tools, proper API. Maybe you don't know but apps/clockface developed for Fitbit OS 4 needs to recoded to support Fitbit OS 5 (Sense and Versa 3) and the developer needs to maintain separate versions. And when a new update of Fitbit OS 5 will be pushed Fitbit Studio will no longer work for Fitbit OS essentially stopping development for Ionic/Versa1/Versa2/Versa Lite.

I also disagree that the Gallery is a great implementation, for once you can't vote/comment the difference programs or even contact the authors easily.

[Rich_Laue]

@Giampi71 I was playing advocate, mentioning that more and more companies are adding premium paid for features. 

Fitbit may simply going with this logic of offering paid for premium, and this may be why we will never see this added to the API

[bouncealong313]

They could actually quite easily release the API and put any new watch faces developed using it behind the Premium paywall if they wanted to. That really shouldn't be that hard to implement. For a start you could simply put them in a part of the app store that requires a Premium account to access, which is a really easy way of implementing it.

I imagine like @Giampi71 said that a strong reason why they're not releasing it normally is to make sure they can cash in on Premium as much as possible with as little effort as possible. Premium services these days are typically about customisation or a bespoke/personal experience, yet they've even put some of the basic dashboard access and sleep scores behind the Premium paywall even though that isn't a bespoke/custom/personalised experience that takes any manual input from individual Fitbit staff - it's all automated by algorithms that are already working, so it wouldn't cost them anything extra to have that as a normal feature. Until enough competition offer similar features for free and do it well enough, they'll continue to paywall whatever they can get away with - that's essentially just typical business practice when you're one of the leading names in a sector. (And I've got no problem with pay-walling Premium features that do take additional business resource to run, my only problem is pay-walling simple automated algorithms that just need a flick of a switch to turn on and no further business resource when you're already paying for an expensive product like a Sense that you're likely to need to replace in 3-4 years with another expensive product).

Let's not forget the Google acquisition. Maybe Fitbit/Google just aren't putting much more development/effort into current Fitbit products since getting the Sense out because they're now working on the rumoured Google watch that may or may not ever see the light of day. That would really explain why the Sense has so many basic problems if it was rushed before staff were pulled onto other products during/after acquisition. It would also explain why there's little support for devs and also why they're trying to push and cash in on Premium as much as possible before the Google watch/wearable comes out and people's attention goes to that.