Google brings its heart rate and respiratory tracking to the Pixel 6, but there’s a catch

It’s showing up for some in early access

You can’t find a single major company in tech today that isn’t intensely focused on health and fitness, and Google is no different. Back in March, the company unveiled a new way to track your heart rate and breathing on Android without any additional hardware. If you’ve recently upgraded to a Pixel 6 and have been dying to give it a shot, the feature is now available — though it might not be as accurate as it once was.

As spotted by 9to5Google, Google’s latest smartphones are gaining support for heart rate and respiratory tracking in “early access” — at least, for some users. Among AP staff, it seems to be a toss-up between not having it at all and it appearing as usual — without any “early access” tag. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for its various states, other than falling victim to a classic Google server-side rollout.

Although there’s no explicit reason given for why this utility wasn’t ready to go from day one, it’s easy to guess just by looking at the hardware itself. While previous Pixel phones have all had the same basic layout, the Pixel 6’s camera bar moves the flash to the opposite end of the phone, limiting the amount of light it can use to track your pulse.

None of Google’s smartphones have built-in hardware capable of natively tracking your heart rate. Instead, it’s using the camera to pick up on changes in the color of your finger to deliver a rating. Unsurprisingly, the amount of light used in each reading is important, so the relocated flash could result in less accurate detection. While the use of a flashlight wasn’t always necessary, it was recommended in low-light situations. As 9to5Google notes in its hands-on, the ability to use the flash is completely missing when testing on a Pixel 6.

For what it’s worth, the respiratory test — despite also being labeled with the same warning — seems to work just as it has on other devices.

If you managed to get your hands on Google’s latest smartphone, just check the main tab in Fit to see whether or not your device supports this tool yet. If you’re lucky, it might not even have an “early access” tag.

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