Health features have become an integral part of every device, and each company is trying to stoke more interest in its products by adding more health-driven features. Google is reportedly working to bring a built-in snore and cough detection tool to Pixels and/or Android in general. Google released version 2.0 of its Health Studies this week to support the launch of a new digital wellbeing study. But what makes this update more newsworthy is the Strings that reveal a “Sleep Audio Collection” study. The study is now only available to Google employees.
Google is working on on-device snore and cough detection for Pixel and Android
As per the report, only full-time Googlers with an Android phone can participate in the study. Also, some environmental conditions are required, including having no more than one adult sleeper in the same room who does not work for a competitor company. “The Health Sensing team is actively working to bring an advanced suite of sensing capabilities and algorithms to Android devices with the goal of providing users with meaningful insight into their sleep,” Google noted. Moreover, collecting the audio “supports this mission by providing data necessary to validate, tune, and develop such algorithms.” We still don’t know if Google wants to bring snore and cough detection to Android or Pixel devices first. However, since Pixel phones are at the forefront of receiving new features developed by Google, they’re more likely to get the feature sooner than any other Android device. Also, it’s still unclear what app will get the features. Google Fit and Clock are some possible candidates. The new health feature could be a “bedside monitoring” feature on Android devices aimed at “nocturnal cough and snore monitoring. Also, they might be a part of a broader Android feature. Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 currently have a Snore & Noise Detect feature. Dates back to 2020, Google added a “Bedtime” hub in Google Clock that could estimate time spent in bed by giving motion and light detection access to the Clock app.
