[upon_drumhead]

US-10192502-B2 Seems to cover using a lookup table to control the amount of light a liquid crystal on silicon device emits per pixel.

US-10945648-B2 seems to cover the heart of the issue. It specifically calls out

> four photodiodes configured to receive light emitted by the LEDs, the four photodiodes being arranged to capture light at different quadrants of tissue of a user;

Which is what I believe Apple was going to change via software disabling one.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/18/apple-watch-import-ban-...

Honestly it seems stretching to say the first one is patentable imho and the second one is easily changed for future hardware versions, which is why I presume Apple isn’t in licensing talks.

[xuhu]

Would it be far fetched to hope that Apple could introduce a jailbreak mechanism in the Apple Watch for the purpose of providing users the option to enable and use all photodiodes for the pulse oximeter ?

[fl0ki]

It might be simpler than that. Like many other watch and phone features, it might just depend on the user's region. Hopefully only in software, but there's also precedent for regional hardware differences.