Sleep tracking is usually a sub-plot in the greater story line of activity-tracking wristbands, but Basis just gave us another reason to care about what our bodies are doing in the wee hours of the night.
The company's new 2.0 software platform—planned to go live on Jan. 21 via iOS, Android and web updates—will include what Basis calls Advanced Sleep Analysis. This feature reports not only periods of deep and light sleep, but also REM sleep, as well as "Toss-and-Turn, Interruptions and Duration."
The addition of concrete REM numbers is a significant step, as competing consumer-grade, wrist-worn trackers can't penetrate our sleep states (let alone our dream states) that deeply. Jawbone's UP software shows periods of light sleep, deep sleep, and wakefulness, while FitBit's software only shows periods of sleep and wakefulness, and can report a "restlessness" factor. Such are the limitations of activity-tracking wristbands that rely only on 3-axis accelerometers for data acquisition.
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