Google announced a couple of new features for the Google Fit app last month. These features were supposed to allow the users to measure their heart rate and their respiratory rate using the phone's cameras, and the features are now rolling out to Google Pixel phones starting today. Google has finally announced the release earlier today, and your Pixel phones should be able to have support for this feature starting today.
Google Pixel Phones Are Even More Functional with the Ability to Measure Heart and Respiratory Rate
Measuring your heart rate is a lot easier than you might think; you have to put your finger on top of the camera lens on the back of your phone with light pressure, and the phone is going to detect the pulse in your fingertip, which will help it measure the heart rate. You can see how it works in the video below.
As far as measuring the respiratory rate is concerned, that is a bit tricky. The first thing is that you will have to put your phone on a stable surface; once you are seated, position your head and chest in the frame of your phone's front camera. Google Fit will then measure small movements in your chest to calculate the respiratory rate.
Google recommends that you wait for a few minutes if you have been active to get more accurate readings. You should also remove any items that could hinder the measurement, including any masks or hates you might be wearing.
Once the measurements are taken, you can go ahead and save them in the Google Fit app; this will allow you to monitor the trends over time. Google also points out that the video streams taken from your phone's cameras are just used for measuring heart rate and respiratory rate and will not be uploaded to its services or stored on the device. These are processed in real-time and then later discarded.
Currently, the feature is limited to Google Pixel phones, but we expect this feature to make its way to other Android phones soon.
