You can already use most smartphones as glorified pedometers thanks to apps that can use the motion sensors to track your movement. If you have a Google Pixel smartphone soon you’ll be able to use the phone’s hardware to track even more health stats.

Google says in March it will bring the ability to measure your heart rate and respiratory rate to Pixel phones via an update to the Google Fit app.

How is Google doing this without adding any new hardware to the mix? Via the camera.

Google says once you grant the app permission to use your phone’s cameras, you can measure respiratory rate by positioning the phone sot he front facing camera can see your head and upper torso. Breathe normally and the phone will measure your respiration.

Heart rate measurement comes courtesy of the rear camera – place your finger over the lens of the camera on the back of your phone and it should be able to detect the rate at which your heart is pumping blood throughout your body.

Google notes that using a camera for these sorts of measurements isn’t as precise as using purpose-built hardware and that “these measurements aren’t meant for medical diagnosis or to evaluate medical conditions.” But if you’re trying to get a sense of whether your quarantine workout gets your heart and lungs pumping, it’s probably better than nothing.

Data can be saved to your Google Fit app to let you track trends over time, or you can discard the results if you’d prefer.

Third-party apps have been offering heart rate measurements for years – the first time I wrote about this technique was way back in 2010. But modern phones tend to have better cameras and support for hardware-accelerated computer vision algorithms which could make the latest iteration a bit more accurate.

Google says it’s also tested its software in a range of situations to account for things like ambient lighting, skin tone, and age so that heart rate detection can accurately measure changes in the color of your fingertip.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,545 other subscribers

2 replies on “Google is bringing new health tracking features to Pixel phones (thanks to the cameras)”

  1. Any post with the words Google and Tracking in it should come with copious reminders and warnings about just how Evil Google has become. Or are you afraid of being CANCELLED Brad?

  2. Using the camera to measure breathing rate seems like doing things the hard way compared to using the microphone.
    But the microphone gives google less personal data when used, so I could see why they wouldn’t do it.

Comments are closed.