Whether you wanted it or not, Google Fit has a new trick up its sleeve – the ability to measure your respiratory rate using your smartphone camera.
Google says that this feature was inspired because respiratory rate, and heart rate, are two important pieces of information to help you understand your health and wellness. While you can already use a fitness tracker or smartwatch to track your heart rate, they won’t all necessarily measure your heart rate or your respiratory rate.
And not everyone owns or wants to own a fitness tracker or smartwatch. To that end Google created a way for users to check these two things with nothing but the camera on their smartphones. That being said, this feature isn’t available within the Google Fit app just yet.
Google Fit can check your respiratory rate starting next month
The feature isn’t available quite yet, but it’s not far off. Google says that users will be able to start checking their respiratory rate within the Google Fit app starting next month.
That puts the feature in a launch window of sometime in March. Google did not give a specific day for the release, but it does confirm next month. So users could be looking at as little as one month or as much as two months for a wait. Should Google decide to release the feature at the very end of March.
It also won’t be available on anything but Pixel phones initially. Google is going to expand this feature to other Android phones at some point in the future though. So most users won’t be left out forever.
You will use both the front and back cameras for these features
You might have already guessed how these features work. But just in case you didn’t, you use both cameras. Or rather one camera for each of the two features.
To measure your heart rate, you just have to place your finger over the rear camera of your device. To measure your respiratory rate, you need to prop your phone up so the front-facing camera can see you from the torso up.
As it needs to be able to see you breathing to work. Google says you just have to breathe normally. It also notes that these are meant to provide any sort of medical diagnosis. If you’re at all interested in keeping track of this information though, this will be one way you can do that.
The post Google Fit Can Use Your Phone Camera To Measure Respiratory Rate appeared first on Android Headlines.

Source: ndroidheadlines.com