The brickbat – My Apple Watch allegedly has the ability to perform a two-lead ECG. But it requires some setup in the Health app on my iPhone. The first step is to enter my birthdate.

Can I just type it in? Hell no. I have to scroll a calendar back, a month per swipe, to get back to my birth month. Done with care that would take an hour. I’ve tried several times to scroll back really fast to get scrolling time down to a few minutes. But on each such attempt an erroneous swipe sets the calendar back to the starting point.

Grr. Tim Cook isn’t the sharpest tack in the box.

The kudo – The small body of the Apple Watch has to have LOTS of antennas: GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC (for Apple Pay). And the cellular models also have to have antennas for the 850MHz and 1.9GHz bands, at least. Impressive.

quote:

The kudo – The small body of the Apple Watch has to have LOTS of antennas: GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC (for Apple Pay). And the cellular models also have to have antennas for the 850MHz and 1.9GHz bands, at least. Impressive.

Fractal antenna designs are probably extensively used in such applications. The theory involved is unfortunately way over my head.

Pretty sure you can set all this up within the watch app on your phone. Not 100% as I set mine up ages ago and don’t recall for sure.

i tried the Apple Watch app. It just tells me to use the built-in Health app. As I said in the OP, big problems with that: almost a thousand swipes to get to my birth month. One of those swipes is always slightly wrong, with the result that I have to start over. Why can’t I simply type Mon, dd, yyyy?

I’m going to have to drive to the Apple Store to make them set my birthdate on my iPhone. Grr.

When Steve Jobs was alive everything Apple just worked. No longer.

I'm trying to remember, but I think that when I set my birth date on the phone, there were rolling selectors at the bottom of the screen for month, year, and date. Took less than a minute to do it. Worst part of the UI design is that it's not really noticeable until you realize that the date selector is there.

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EDIT: Yes, I was correct. You can set / edit your birthdate in the Health App in less than a minute:

• Open the Health App
  
  
• At the bottom of the screen, tap on "Browse"
  
  
• Top right of screen tap on your avatar
  
  
• Tap on "Health Details"
  
  
• Top right, tap on "Edit"
  
  
• Tap on "Date of Birth" -- bottom of screen, you will see a selector thingy. Month, date, and year can each be scrolled independently. Just drag each one up or down until all three are lined up with your birthdate, then tap "Done" at the top right of the screen, and Bob's your uncle.

^^^^^^
Thanks V-Tail, your instructions worked perfectly. After which, my age was also correctly displayed, in parentheses.

P. S. – As with my Kardia Mobile, all reports, so far, have been “Normal Sinus Rhythm“.

The nice thing about the Apple Watch is, it checks the regularity of your pulse continually ( not continuously), so even if you’re sleeping as long as you’re wearing the watch.
And as far as the ECG goes, it’s easier to use than the Kardia Mobile.