Soon, you won’t need a smartwatch to measure your heart rate or breathing. Google announced last month that an update was coming to Pixel phones that would allow users to measure their breathing and heart rate using cameras.
Android Police is reporting that this feature will be released for “supported pixels” starting tomorrow through an update to the Google Fit app.
We already knew that this would be an exclusive time for Pixel phones, with the feature arriving on other Android devices at an undefined later date, but the word “supported” is still curiously ambiguous here.
Does this mean any Pixel device that can physically run the software or any that is officially still compatible with Google? If it is the latter, it excludes Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which reached the end of the support period last October.
The feature will give those who don’t have a wearable by constantly measuring their metrics a way to check their heart rate and breathing. Measuring your heart rate involves placing your fingertip on the rear camera, which then analyzes the subtle changes in color on the skin to provide a pulse reading. Google tests show that it has an accuracy of 2%, although it is obviously designed for spot tests, instead of providing constant updates in the way that the best smartwatches do.
Breathing tracking, in turn, uses the front camera. Place the phone in front of you with your head and torso in view, and after monitoring your chest movements, the app will calculate your breaths per minute. Google claims that, in tests, it proved to be accurate at one breath per minute; however, the company emphasizes that neither it nor heart rate measurement is intended for medical purposes.
Despite this, Google clearly feels quite confident in the accuracy of its technology, which should give it an edge over the various applications that claim to do the same thing, without any real scrutiny.
“We developed both resources – and completed the initial clinical studies to validate them – to work in a variety of real-world conditions and for as many people as possible,” wrote Shwetak Patel, director of health technologies at Google Health in February. “For example, since our heart rate algorithm depends on the approximation of blood flow from color changes at someone’s fingertip, it must take into account factors such as lighting, skin tone, age and more to work for everyone . ”
If you have a Pixel smartphone, you can try it out tomorrow. Keep an eye out for updates to the Google Fit app and tell us how it works for you.