Now a days, many of you wear fitness trackers and number of times you didn’t like to wear them or didn’t want to invest any amount of money in these fitness trackers. To avoid this, at MIT, researchers come up with a way by which you can track your pulse by using your smartphone, even though it is not in your hand.
Researchers have created an app – BioPhone which can be installed into your existing phones without requiring any special or additional hardware. After installing the app, the phones will be able to monitor your heart & breathing rate even though, the phone is in your pocket or bag.
For demonstration purpose, the research group installed the app onto the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the phone will make use of accelerometer and gyroscope in order to track the minor vibrations and body movements which occur due to your heart beating or chest rising and falling during breathing.
The app isn’t available for the public as of now but it is expected that, it will be available sometime in near future. In a test, 12 subjects were used to conduct a trip run and the app perform what it was supposed to do, although there were inconsistencies when compared to the FDA approved sensors. In a trail, there is a difference of more than one heart beat per minute and a quarter of breath per minute.