Apple Watch was initially supposed to track stress, blood pressure, heart activity

When Apple announced the Apple Watch last September, the company gave us a brief overview of the device’s capabilities: tracking fitness and heart rate, receiving notifications, playing music, running apps, paying for goods via Apple Pay. However, CEO Tim Cook also told us that the Apple Watch was capable of so much more, there just wasn’t time to cover all of the watch’s features during September’s iPhone event.

The Apple Watch is scheduled for launch in mid-April, but Apple hasn’t really given us much more information than what we got at the initial event last fall. The company is expected to hold another Apple Watch event closer to the release date, so we’ll find out all about what the smartwatch can do then. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal has given us a couple of features that we shouldn’t expect to see in April.

WSJ cites sources that say the Apple Watch was initially supposed to track stress, blood pressure and heart activity, but these functions ultimately didn’t make the cut for generation one of the hardware. People familiar with the matter say these features were left on the cutting room floor for multiple reasons, among them potential regulatory road blocks and sensors that weren’t sophisticated enough for the job. These features are expected to make it into future iterations of the device, but early adopters will have to live with the more familiar smartwatch experience outlined last September.

[source]The Wall Street Journal[/source]