back to article Google’s Pixel phones to measure heart rate and breathing, other ‘droids coming soon

Google has announced that its own Pixel Android phones will soon gain the power to measure users heart rate and respiratory rate. With the help of the Google Fit app, Pixel phones will measure breaths if users “place your head and upper torso in view of your phone’s front-facing camera and breathe normally.” Heart rates will …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google’s watching you

    Nothing to worry about. That Barcode on your forehead is just an electronic Tattoo.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge

    AI is wonderful

    With a little bit of Google AI magic we can presume that it will automatically add a Calendar entry into your GMail account reminding you when you are likely to die.

    1. Kane
      Thumb Up

      Re: AI is wonderful

      "With a little bit of Google AI magic we can presume that it will automatically add a Calendar entry into your GMail account reminding you when you are likely to die be renewed."

      There, FTFY

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: AI is wonderful

      This is Google, so they'll only add that calendar entry three months before the date when you'll be "discontinued". People currently using your services will be urged to find a replacement.

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Could be fun

    Just to see what my apparently abnormally low breathing rate - four or five a minute - does to the software. It certainly upset the hospital after a serious accident some years back...

    But then again, it's Google. So nah...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Could be fun

      Well my mothers breathing slowed down more than that last night, and movement detection would have come in useful, as we weren't sure for a few minutes whether she had actually gone. Alternatively something to chill the screen of the phone, so it can be used as a mirror for detecting breath.

      1. IGotOut Silver badge

        Re: Could be fun

        Ahhh baby monitors...watching the joys of new parents when the baby stops breathing for what to them seems an eternity, omly to hear them take a huge breath and carry on as normal.

  4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Big Brother

    another item on their BB checklist

    to be ticked.

    This is well beyond anything that Apple has proposed.

    I'd expect users to see targetted AD's for medication to counter the diagnosis that their AI has made.

    you will know that you are in deep do-do when you get ads for Funeral Directors.

    Another reason NOT to use anything with a Google brand or stamp.

    Orwell would be turning in his grave if he read this.

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: another item on their BB checklist

      Orwell would be turning in his grave if he read this.

      I think he's more likely to be saying "I told you so!".

  5. Mike 137 Silver badge

    "when users place a finger on the phones’ rear-facing camera lens"

    A real good move for creating those pin sharp photos - cover the lens with fingerprints.

  6. sreynolds

    But can it....

    Hold my hose when I go for a piss? Or is it going to hand me some tissue and make sure I am wiping the google way?

    1. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: But can it....

      Saved for the next "amazing" updated phone.

  7. Whitter
    Meh

    ... measure breaths ...

    Pixel phones will measure breaths if users “place your head and upper torso in view of your phone’s front-facing camera and breathe normally.”

    Is this intended for measuring a heathy person's breathing rate during gaps during a training run or the like?

    Whether useful for that, or indeed anything, rather depend on what thye mean by "normally".

    Does it exclude deep or accelerated breathing? Shallow breathing? Require a static upper body? Hmmm...

  8. tony72

    Innovation?

    There is at least one app, "Heart Rate Monitor" by REPS, that has been able to do the heart rate via camera thing since forever, I've used that on my last few phones. Respiratory rate, I don't know if there's an app for that, I haven't looked, so I guess that bit at least may be an innovation.

    So has Google Fit improved much in the last few years? When I last used it, it would insist that I had done several miles of cycling every day, when I don't even own a bike; it was classifying some of my walking or driving as cycling, and there was no way to tell it otherwise. Hence I assigned it to the shit-by-design category and haven't felt the need to revisit it since.

    1. Shooter

      Re: Innovation?

      I've used Heart Rate Monitor in years past, on previous phones. However, I have a very irregular heartbeat due to chronic A-Fib; the app doesn't count for a long enough time to give an accurate result.

      As I said, it's been a few years and a few phones ago; maybe it works better now.

  9. Adair Silver badge

    For thousands of years

    ... human beings have somehow managed to cope without Google; and yet, even with Google, we still all die.

    So, in the grand scheme of things, does Google really serve any good purpose at all? If Google disappeared tomorrow would civilisation come crashing down?

    Who actually NEEDS Google?

    And Lineage works just fine - once you've figured out how to install it!

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: For thousands of years

      > once you've figured out how to install it

      You highlighted the problem: Alternative OSes for phones are only for sysadmin/dev types. People of other disciplines, no matter how educated, are left out.

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: For thousands of years

      You could make that argument for any technological advancement more sophisticated than fire. What's your point? Feel free to move into a cave while you contemplate the answer.

      1. Adair Silver badge

        Re: For thousands of years

        What's my point? - mmm, I think I will leave that up to you to decide.

      2. ThatOne Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Re: For thousands of years

        > You could make that argument for any technological advancement more sophisticated than fire.

        Utter nonsense. "Technological advancement" means precisely making stuff available to the general public, the advancement of humanity/civilization as a whole.

        Besides, what would you say if you had an appendicitis, and the doctor just shrugged and told you to go learn to perform surgery? I think "Jerk" would be most peoples' first choice.

  10. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Joke

    Even better . . .

    I hear they're proposing enhancements which would allow the phones to detect ailments such as hemorrhoids and colon cancer!

  11. Craig 2

    It's well known

    that as soon as you concentrate on "breathing normally", you can do anything but...

  12. Danny 2

    Devil's advocate

    For years I advised my mum how not to be tracked by the police by her phone/devices. Then she said, "I'd quite like to be tracked by the police if I ever wandered off". She trusted the police more than herself.

    The fragility and insecurity of old age throws up the mirror image of privacy concerns. I've since bought my parents all types of intrusive devices. I got them oximeters, stand-alone so not monitor-able, but I - and they - would like their blood oxygen level to be online. Apparently a sudden drop is a sign you are about to die from covid-19, yet my parents only remember to check their level when I prompt them. Stick that on a phone and we'll buy it.

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