Soon you will not need a smartwatch to measure your heart rate or breathing. Google announced last month that there will be an upgrade of Pixel phones that allow users to measure their breathing and heart rate via the cameras.
Android police are now reporting that this feature will roll out to “supported pixels” from tomorrow via an update of the Google Fit app.
We already knew it would be a time frame for Pixel phones, with the feature to appear later on an undefined date on other Android devices, but the word “support” is still interesting here.
Does this mean any Pixel device that can physically manage the software, or any that is officially still supported by Google? If it is the latter, it excludes the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which reached the end of their support period last October.
The feature gives those who cannot measure their portable statistics a way to check their heart rate and respiration. To measure your heart rate, place a fingertip over the rear camera, which then analyzes subtle color changes in the skin to give a pulse. Google’s testing shows that it’s accurate to 2%, although of course it’s designed for one – time testing, rather than providing constant updates like the best smartwatches do.
Meanwhile, breathing detection uses the front camera. Place the phone in front of you with your head and torso in the eye, and after monitoring your chest movements, the app calculates your breathing per minute. Google claims that this is accurate during one test within one breath per minute; however, the company emphasizes that neither this nor the heart rate measurement is intended for medical purposes.
Despite this, Google clearly feels very confident in the accuracy of its technology, which should give it the edge over the various programs that claim to do the same thing, without any real investigation.
“We’ve developed both features – and completed the first clinical studies to validate them – so that they work under different conditions and for as many people as possible,” Shwetak Patel, director of health technology at Google Health, wrote in February. “For example, since our heartbeat algorithm depends on the blood flow of color changes in someone’s fingertip, it must take into account factors such as lighting, skin color, age and more in order to work for everyone.”
If you own a Pixel phone, you can try it yourself from tomorrow. Keep up with the updates for the Google Fit app and let us know how it works for you.