Earlier this week, we were excited to hear that the long-awaited skin temperature sensing feature was finally ready to start rolling out to Garmin watches. The tool, which will track skin temperature overnight, looks set to be a new addition to your device's suite of sleep-tracking tools, and should give you some interesting insights into your overall health. Unfortunately though, it looks like our celebrations were premature.
Skin temperature sensing was included in the release notes for beta software version 8.23 for the Garmin Venu 3 and 3S, which is now available for member of Garmin's public beta testing program. Unfortunately the company has now confirmed that this was an accident, and updated the release notes to remove it.
One confused Venu 3 owner posted in the beta program forums sparking a conversation about where the data came from, and whether it was available in the mobile app yet. The discussion was cut short when a Garmin representative named Joey stepped in to explain that "skin temp feature was inadvertently included in the change log and is not yet available to public beta."
Coming soon (hopefully)
Don't be too disappointed, though – the feature might not be ready yet, but it's almost certainly on the way. Back in February one watch owner spotted a new section in the Garmin Connect app for monitoring overnight temperature, and in March another user noticed code in the app for displaying temperature trends and messages while your watch is calculating a baseline.
Last month, we heard rumors that skin temperature sensing would appear alongside another new feature called Sleep Events. It's not yet clear what these are, but they may be periods of wakefulness, or moments when your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) drops below normal levels.
Hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer to find out. I'll continue to keep an ear to the ground and will bring you more details as soon as they're available.
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