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Hello everyone! Michael here from The Daily Note II/3. So the Galaxy S5 was announced
and one of the interesting new features was a heart-rate monitor. But here's the thing,
people have measuring their heart-rate for at least the last 3 years on most Android
devices. And you don't really need any special sensor to do it. You do it through the camera
sensor and the flash unit. And it works remarkably well. And the great thing is, it's free, and
you can do it now. So here's the app. But before I install it,
I want to prove without question that this app is real. Because a lot of people are skeptical
about this app when you read the comments. They believe there is some trickery involved
with the flash and they're just drawing you a nice fake graph. Well, this app definitely
works and you can try this for yourself with the just the camera app.
So start the camera app, go to settings, settings again, select Flash, and choose On. Close
the settings, and hit the video record button. And now you should see that the flash is activated.
And carefully, place your finger over the flash and the camera sensor. Make sure to
cover your camera sensor fully but not firmly. You don't want to restrict blood passing through
your finger. And after your eyes adjust, you should be able to see your finger pulsating
provided that you have some descent circulation. If we flip the phone over, you should also
see that your screen is a bright red orange, and you can see here, towards the upper region,
the color is pulsating. So that's all that this app is doing. It's just measuring the
changes in color, graphing it for you, and counting the time between the peaks. If you
do have a weak pulse however, you can try a few things to raise your bloodpressure a
little bit, but if you believe that it works, let's just move on. The app is better detecting
your pulse better than your eyes. So let's install the app. As mentioned it
is free. Now I purchased the paid app more than 2 years ago. I believe the only difference
is that it will keep track of your heartrate measurements. So let's start this up. And
just like we did with the camera app, place your finger over both the flash and the camera
sensor. And after a few seconds, it starts graphing your heart rate. If you know how
to take your pulse, you will also see that the graphs are in sync with the pulse that
you feel at your fingertips. I want to restate how it is important to cover
the entire camera sensor and not move your finger. Because it's just measuring the brightness
of the image, and if I just lift my finger off and on rapidly, you can really mess with
the results. One last thing, some people say how it gives
you a reading when you just place it on the table. And it's true that it does this, but
only because camera sensors pick up noise along with light information, and it's just
amplifying the tiniest amount of changes it sees and showing that to you on a graph. You
can see, it looks nothing like a pulse. It's just static.
rate by measuring your heart rate first thing in the morning. Coffee, stress, and level
of physical activity will definitely impact the numbers.
So there you go. It turns out you don't need a special sensor or the Samsung Galaxy S5
to measure your heart rate. You can do it virtually on any Android and it works really
well. So that's the end of today's video. If you like this video or found it useful,
make sure you hit that like button and subscribe for more upcoming videos. And as always, thank
you for watching.