Headphones with built-in health monitoring features aren’t new, but it looks like Apple wants to get in on the action. This is according to a recent DigiTimes report in which they claim that Apple could potentially use ambient light sensors in a future pair of AirPods, but it stops short of actually mentioning why.
However, according to speculation, it has been suggested that maybe this could be for health reasons. As iMore points out, Apple has a patent that was discovered last year that revealed that the company was exploring the idea of incorporating health monitoring features into the AirPods, and now with this new report, it seems that using these light sensors could be how they might go about doing it.
Given that the AirPods already feature sensors that can detect when the headphones are in the wearer’s ears, Apple might use these light sensors for other features, like taking the temperature of the user or measuring their heart rate. Apple currently uses an optical sensor for the heart rate monitoring feature of the Apple Watch, so it is possible that they might want to implement something similar for the AirPods.
That being said, as interesting as this may be, we think that Apple definitely needs to address the battery life of the AirPods first. There have been multiple user reports claiming that the AirPods loses its charge pretty quickly after the first year, so if they want to turn it into a health monitoring tool, that definitely needs to be improved upon.
Filed in . Read more about AirPods, Fitness, Headphones, Health and Wearable Tech. Source: imore