Google Fit already has plenty of ways to tell you you’re not in shape – a common problem during the ongoing pandemic. But it picks up a new way to measure both your heart rate and your respiratory rate, using just your smartphone’s camera. The feature is expected to be released next month, and while it’s a Pixel exclusive to launch, it should come to other Android phones later.
Aside from simple usability, the features are frankly pretty impressive when it comes to the overall “geek factor” behind how they work, and we can’t wait to try it for ourselves. The respiration rate monitor works by aligning your face and upper body in certain positions in front of the front camera so that it can track the movement of your chest down to the pixel level to determine how fast or slow you are breathing.
The heart rate monitor is even more interesting. Again, it uses your phone’s camera, but this time it tracks small changes in the color of your fingers to determine your heart rate. That’s one thing actually, and it turns out that the camera in a smartphone is just enough to measure these very small differences. If, as I did when I heard the news, you try to stare down your own hands to detect this color change, you probably won’t succeed – the so-called ‘pulsating photoplethysmographic signals’ are usually too small for our eyes to pick up.
This isn’t just another specially hacked machine learning model for startups. Google has conducted clinical studies to validate its accuracy for real-world conditions, and it works with a wide variety of skin tones, ages and lighting.
There’s no word on when this feature will hit other phones, but Google expects to roll it out to Pixels starting next month – perhaps as part of the Pixel feature’s expected drop in March.
