Google is adding heart and respiratory rate monitors to the Fit app on Pixel phones this month, and it plans to add them to other Android phones in the future. Both features rely on the smartphone camera: it measures respiratory rate by monitoring the rise and fall of a user’s chest, and heart rate by tracking color change as blood moves through the fingertip.
The features are only intended to let users track overall wellness and cannot evaluate or diagnose medical conditions, the Google said.
When the feature becomes available on your phone, you can open the Fit app to take your measurements by tapping the new cards on the home page. Google is guessing your rate of breath by looking at the movement of your chest, so it’ll need to see your torso. Meanwhile, it uses tiny changes in color under your skin to calculate your heart rate, and you’ll have to place your finger on the rear camera for this. The Fit app will guide you through how to frame yourself using the front camera for respiratory rates, and it’s not yet clear how well this will work.
You’ll also have to hold your phone up for about 30 seconds for it to capture your respiratory rate, which is longer than it sounds. Plus, this implementation also means you won’t be relying on this feature to keep tabs on your pulse while you’re working out, unless you plan to keep holding your phone and looking at the screen while you run or dance. Still, it’s nice for people without fitness trackers to have a way to get these metrics when they want.
You’ll also be able to see your pulse and breath metrics alongside your other stats in the Fit app. The company hasn’t shared any guidelines on minimum camera specs to use this feature. But eventually, Google may be able to reach a wider audience than most if it’s able to bring this to devices with less-sharp cameras or running Android Go, for example.
For those concerned about their privacy, Google is performing these calculations on-device and you can choose to save the resulting measurements to Fit. You can also delete them at any point from your account settings. Bear in mind that these new features haven’t received FDA clearance and weren’t designed for medical diagnosis or to evaluate medical conditions, too.
