- Kyle Chua
Apple Exploring Ways To Add Health-Focused Features to AirPods
Apple is studying the possibility of turning its popular AirPods into health devices, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The California-based electronics firm is reportedly looking into adding health-focused features to its popular wireless earphones, such as a body temperature and posture monitor.
Along with these, Apple is exploring the potential of offering AirPods as hearing aids, which should improve the user’s hearing. The report, however, doesn’t state how this function will differ from the existing Conversation Boost feature. When enabled, Conversation Boost uses the microphones on the AirPods to isolate voices from background noise, allowing the user to hear conversations better.
The Wall Street Journal adds that these new features "aren’t expected by next year and might never be rolled out to consumers or the timing could change". This means that, as of right now, Apple is not working on implementing these features yet. Instead, it’s still studying the possibility of adding them in the future.
The plans seemingly hint at Apple’s ambitions to expand its health and wellness offerings to its other devices. Currently, most of the company’s innovations in the health space has been focused on the Apple Watch.
The Verge notes that commercial products need to pass high medical regulatory standards to implement health features, which can sometimes become a barrier for launch or lead to delays. So it’s a given that we shouldn’t expect these features to be included in Apple’s new AirPods for at least a few more years.
Apple is expected to unveil the next iteration of AirPods in a coming hardware launch event on 18 October. Rumours suggest that the so-called AirPods 3 will sport a design that takes inspiration from the higher-end AirPods Pro. It will also feature shorter stems and a redesigned charging case with a larger battery.
Written by Kyle Chua
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