Apple wants to introduce health features beyond the Apple Watch, and headphones seem like the perfect device for it. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, Has revealed in its weekly newsletter that the Cupertino company plans to update the AirPods “to become a health tool in the next year or two” to, among other things, allow the user to obtain “some kind of auditory data”.
Gurman hasn’t gone into depth about potential health-related features that Apple could include in the next-generation AirPods. We assume, however, that the company plans to add some kind of diagnostic function through the use of specific sensors. Precisely, something similar to what Apple already does with the Apple Watch and the electrocardiogram or the blood oxygen saturation sensor (SpO2).
It is not the first time that the possibility of Apple including health-related benefits in AirPods has been considered. Ming-Chi Kuo, in fact, detailed A year ago the company intended to add this type of features to face increasingly fierce competition. Later, Kevin Lynch, vice president of technology, hinted to TechCrunch that AirPods could also be a complement to the Apple Watch and iPhone to collect health data.
The current AirPods, in fact, already have some health features. One of them is Live Listening, a function that can be especially useful for people with hearing problems and that, specifically, allows you to boost the microphone to be able to listen to conversations in noisy environments. AirPods also have a mode called Conversation Boost. This makes the headphones capable of picking up the voice of the person in front more clearly.
Health features on AirPods could be coming in a year or two
Hearing health features in AirPods, we reiterate, could be here in a year or two, according to Gurman. It is not clear if Apple will launch new generations to add these features or if, instead, it will update the firmware of the current models.. And it is that the sensors and components that include the AirPods Pro 2 and the third generation AirPods, such as the speakers or the microphones, could be enough to carry out this type of analysis.
Apple could also include health functions on the iPhone through a feature called Body ID. This would work in a similar way to Face ID, but with an important difference. Instead of analyzing the face to unlock the device, Body ID would be able to scan the entire body to provide medical data. Or even, make a recognition of the person.