Google is working to expand its health tracking features with its Android smartphone. The company is working on two new features for phones that will provide more information about sleep quality.
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Last year, Google released a new update to the Google Fit app that turned Pixel phones into mobile heart and breath monitors. Features use your phone’s camera, microphone and accelerometer to measure your heart rate and respiration.
Google is currently reportedly testing snoring and cough detection features for Android. These features are part of an ongoing study by the Google Health Sensing team conducting the Sleep Audio Collection study. Information about the development was revealed by journalists of 9to5Google from the code of the Google Health Studies application.
Currently, Google staff can participate in the study and they must have an Android phone. The environmental conditions required for this study are that there should be no more than one adult bed in one room that does not work for a competitor.
Google claims that the Health Sensinog team is developing advanced capabilities and recognition algorithms to give Android users a better idea of their dream activity.
Night cough and snoring monitoring will probably use a phone microphone to record snoring and coughing events during sleep. The Google Nest Hub already offers these features. The device uses Motion Sense (based on Soli Radar) to monitor sleep, measure breathing and analyze alarming sounds such as coughing or snoring. Fitbit also offers a similar feature called Snore & Detect Noise on Sense and Versa 3.
It is unclear whether the snoring and cough detection function will work in conjunction with the smartwatch or will exist separately. It is also unknown whether this will be an exclusive feature for Pixel smartphones, or whether it will be available to owners of other Android devices.