Who needs a smartwatch to read your heart rate when all you really need is your smartphone! Google is introducing to its Fit app a new feature that lets you measure your heart rate by using your device’s cameras!
Just Google for now
This new feature will be available only for Pixel smartphones for the time being, other Android phones will get the update in the future.
How does it work?
The way it works is by placing your finger over the rear camera; the software then ‘sees’ the colour change in your skin as blood moves through your fingertips. It needs to be mentioned however, that this isn’t an entirely new thing – Samsung has done this before on their older Galaxy smartphones, which they then removed starting with the Galaxy S10 devices.
What is possibly entirely is a feature that measures your respiratory rate using your phone as well – to do this, users must face the selfie lens and have their head and chest visible in the viewfinder. The software then monitors how your chest rises and falls while the user breathes and uses machine learning to gather an analysis report.
The respiratory rate is accurate to within one breath per minute for folks without health conditions, said Jiening Zhan, a technical lead at Google Health. Meanwhile, the heart rate sensor was accurate within 2 percent, and was tested on people of different skin tones.
We’re definitely up for health-centric innovations like this, and it will make it easier from more diverse financial backgrounds to keep tabs of their general health, since there’s no need for a smartwatch now.