AirPods with integrated health-tracking sensors measuring your body temperature and heart rate sound nice but don’t count on Apple launching those anytime soon.
- Apple won’t release AirPods this year with integrated health sensors to measure your heart rate or body temperature, as previously rumored.
- That doesn’t mean Apple has given up on health-tracking AirPods completely because they may arrive someday, like in a few years from now.
- Health-tracking AirPods would enable people who don’t own an Apple Watch to track certain health functions and warn the user about potential anomalies.
No health-tracking AirPods in 2022
We’ve been hearing about a pair of AirPods with integrated health sensors since at least 2018. To this date, however, Apple has shipped no AirPods with any health sensors inside. Writing in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter on Bloomberg, Mark Gurman has advised against expecting health-tracking AirPods in 2022.
Over the past few months, there have been rumors about this year’s model gaining the ability to determine a wearer’s heart rate or body temperature. I’m told that neither feature is likely to arrive in the 2022 upgrade.
Gurman acknowledges that heart rate and body temperature sensors aren’t entirely out of the question for AirPods—and we previously heard that future AirPods could even help fix your posture—but neither feature appears ready for prime time yet. Putting both body temperature and heart rate sensors in a tiny device that goes into one’s ear would require further miniaturization, and it doesn’t seem like Apple is there yet. But all hope is not lost—Gurman alleges that both features could indeed hit future AirPods, eventually. Read: 20+ things to do and know after buying AirPods
How about a health-tracking watch?
While you’ll have to give up a dream of health-tracking AirPods, at least for now, there are reasons to be excited about the next Apple Watch. According to Gurman, the upcoming Apple Watch Series 8 models will feature a new health sensor to measure the body temperature. But instead of giving you precise readings of your body’s temperature, which would require FDA approval, Apple’s feature will instead put up a notification alert should it determine that you may be running a fever.