Google Fit has many ways of telling you that you are incapable – a common problem during the ongoing pandemic. But it takes up a new way to measure your heart rate and breathing rate using only the camera of your smartphone. The feature is expected to land next month, and while it’s an exclusive Pixel to launch, it’s coming to other Android phones later.
Aside from the ease of use, the features are honestly pretty impressive when it comes to the overall “geek factor” behind its operation, and we can’t wait to try it for ourselves. The breathing tempo monitor works by setting your face and torso in certain positions in front of the front camera so that it can detect the movement of your chest to the pixel level to determine how fast or slow you are breathing.
The heart rate monitor is even more fascinating. Again, it uses the camera of your phone, but this time keep an eye on small changes in the color of your fingers to determine your heart rate. This is actually something, and it turns out that the camera in a smartphone is accurate enough to measure these very small differences. If you, as I heard the news, try to stare into your own hands to notice this color change, you are unlikely to be successful – the so-called “pulsating photoplethysmographic signals” are usually too few for us to pick up.
It is also not just a special, hacked machine learning model for startup. Google has conducted clinical studies to confirm its accuracy for real conditions, and it works with a wide range of skin colors, ages and lighting.
There’s no word on when this feature will land on other phones, but Google expects it to start rolling out for Pixels from next month – perhaps as part of the expected drop in the Pixel feature in March.
