Like many of us, Google is increasingly interested in our health. The company is today announcing new features that will allow those without portable sensors to get a reading of their respiratory and heart rates. Starting next month, Pixel owners will be able to use their phone cameras to measure their pulse and breathing rates through Google Fit. The company said it plans to expand to more Android devices over time as well.
When the feature is available on your phone, you can open the Fit app to take your measurements by tapping on the new cards on the home page. Google is guessing your breathing rate by watching your chest move, so it will need to see your torso. In the meantime, he uses small changes in color under his skin to calculate his heart rate, and you’ll have to put your finger on the rear camera for that. The Fit app will guide you through how to fit using the front camera for breathing rates, and it’s still unclear how it will work. If you are wearing baggy clothes, will the system still be able to tell if you are breathing?
You will also have to hold the phone for about 30 seconds so that it captures your breathing rate, which is longer than it looks. In addition, this implementation also means that you will not rely on this feature to control your pulse while you exercise, unless you plan to continue holding the phone and looking at the screen while running or dancing. Still, it’s good for people without fitness trackers to have a way to get these metrics whenever they want.
If this heart rate detection method sounds familiar, you may be thinking about Samsung’s Galaxy S5, which had a separate sensor below the camera. But apps that allow you to use your phone to measure your pulse have been around since at least 2014, so this isn’t exactly a new concept. But, as Google is the titan of the software that it is, it offers some benefits. In addition to completing initial clinical tests and validations to ensure the accuracy of its products, Google also made an effort to ensure that its computer vision-based method would work on all skin tones, ages and lighting conditions.
You will also be able to see your pulse and breathing metrics along with your other statistics in the Fit app. The company has not shared any guidance on the camera’s minimum specifications for using this feature (which for now makes sense, since only Pixel phones are currently supported). But eventually, Google may be able to reach a wider audience than most if it is able to take that to devices with less sharp cameras or running Android Go, for example.
For those who care about their privacy, Google is performing these calculations on the device and you can choose to save the resulting measurements in Fit. You can also delete them at any time in your account settings. Keep in mind that these new features have not received FDA authorization and are not designed for medical diagnosis or to assess medical conditions as well.