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Losing my phone while abroad nearly cost me my health
These days, losing your phone can be life threatening, especially when you're a diabetic
What happens when you lose your phone abroad? For most people, the answer is fairly uncomplicated: either use a backup phone or go to a store and buy a replacement. However, my recent experience at MWC 2024 proved anything but, and provided me with some valuable lessons about the relationship between health and technology along the way.
How to send your iOS Medical ID data when you dial 911
Apple's Health app now lets you send medical data along with an emergency call: Here's how to enable it
When calling 911 or a similar service about a medical emergency, first responders and associated medical staff must know a few things about you. That could include medications you're allergic to, your blood type for blood transfusions, long-term symptoms known by your doctor, and health quirks that could lead to wrong or dangerous diagnoses. Sometimes, that information is on a health card or note in your wallet, but EMRs (emergency medical responders) may not find it.
Google Fit: How to track your fitness goals and stay healthy
It's time to burn those summer calories
Google Fit is one of the easiest ways to track your physical activity, whether you exercise regularly or want to check how active you are. The service helps you track workouts and physical activities, including walks, bike rides, strolls, and step counts.
Smart scales provide great utility for anyone interested or concerned with monitoring their health. The best smart scales do so much more than tell you your weight, incorporating emerging technologies to track and measure critical health metrics for your health and fitness. These new smart devices have a broad appeal, but selecting the best smart scales can be challenging as there are many models with varying specs and features.
What is Health Connect and how do I use it?
What you need to know about the local Android service that connects all your fitness apps
The best health and fitness apps come in different forms and shapes, performing better in some functions than others. When you use more than one, keeping your health data in sync can be a hassle, often with no central place to collect it all. Google's new Health Connect service aims to fix that. It offers a single, streamlined hook that all health apps can use, making it easy for them to share data.
The best Android fitness apps to help you stay healthy
Choose from a hand-picked selection of the best apps to get healthy
Jumpstarting a daily routine to get your life in order is sometimes more complicated than it needs to be. Healthy living is about keeping your mental well-being and physical fitness in check. Still, sometimes we need to figure out where to begin and how to maintain our fitness, which is why we turn to external help from some of the best apps on Android. Apps enable healthy habits like exercise routines and guided meditations, record our daily progress, and showcase how close we are to meeting those goals. This is why we've inspected some of the best fitness and health apps available on Android that you can link to your favorite smartwatch or phone to hit the ground running.
Get a grip: How PopSockets can save you from decades of pain
Even if you're not as phone-addicted as I am, you are not immune to Blackberry Thumb
As I write this, it's 10:30 in the morning and my fingers already hurt. My left pinky is particularly unhappy with me for a new case that lacks MagSafe support or a built-in grip, which led to me falling back on my old pinky-propping habit of resting my pinky under the bottom of my Galaxy S23 most of the day yesterday instead of using one of my many stick-on phone grips.
Part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is looking after your dietary habits. Of course, snagging takeout frequently and snacking on the wrong kinds of foods won't do you any favors in the long term. But sometimes, we need to sharpen awareness of our current eating habits and some valuable points on where to begin developing a healthier diet. So we've created a list of some of the best Android apps that are easily accessible on your favorite Android phone to enable those healthier choices for your daily food intake and meal planning.
Health data privacy is the focus of a new bill in Congress
Preventing your info from being sold for targeted ads
The overturning of Roe v. Wade last year opened up major concerns about the privacy of personal health data and whether health care services could be compelled to disclose it to the government or, perhaps worse, sell it to ad buyers. The right to privacy, at least in this very specific situation, could be reinstated not by case law, but by Congress — a new bill has been introduced in the Senate that will prohibit any personally identifiable health and location data from being sold for advertising purposes.
A period tracker app is the best virtual diary for recording biological changes before and after your monthly visitor arrives. Though period and ovulation predictions are not 100% accurate, you can estimate when they will occur. Tracker apps can also get deeply personal, logging information concerning when you had sex, your fertility window, medications, and if you've had an abortion. Although it's now easier to protect your digital privacy, research uncovers the increasingly unregulated nature of the data broker industry.
This fully cuffless blood pressure monitor connects to your Android phone
The monitor looks a lot like a classic SpO2 meter for your finger
You may not have heard of Valencell before, but it’s the company behind many health sensors in all kinds of Android smartwatches and fitness trackers, helping you measure your heart rate and more while working out. During CES 2023, the company decided to leap out of the business-to-business market and introduce a product for consumers with its own branding. The company revealed a new health device that can connect to your phone and measure your blood pressure on your fingertip, all without requiring a bulky and uncomfortable cuff.
The Oura Ring may have a worthy competitor in the upcoming Evie
Creators seek FDA approval, aim to launch mid-year
The best smartwatches and fitness trackers do an excellent job tracking your health — they wouldn't be the best if they didn't. But for those who are looking for even lower profile options, it's a bit of desert out there right now. The Oura Ring has been popular enough to last three whole generations, but it only provides wearers comprehensive health data with a monthly subscription. California-based Movano Health is looking to flip the script with its new smart ring, designed especially for women.
What is Amazon pharmacy and should I use it?
Yet another Prime benefit that may be cheaper than your insurance co-pay
The rise of online pharmacy services is one of the convenient trends that became increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon was just one of the company that got in on the action with its Amazon Pharmacy service. Amazon's prescription delivery servcies provides a way for you to access health care at your doorstep. Since the company acquired PillPack in 2018, Amazon has split pharmaceutical services in two. You can use PillPack to organize dozens of drugs or use Amazon Pharmacy when you don't have that many prescriptions.
Google's Health Connect app beta is now ready for data-obsessed fitness buffs to try
Letting you play data traffic cop
Google and Samsung have been working hard to make Wear OS 3 software worthy enough for people to use on the best smartwatches an Android user can get. As part of the improvement initiative, one of the main attractions was an all-in-one management hub that let users decide what to do with all the fitness and health data they've generated. That hub, better known as Health Connect, is now available for wearers to download and use in beta.
Google is adding Health Connect support to Fitbit's Android app
Keep your health and fitness info all synced up and tidy
Fitbit is slowly becoming a central piece of Google's fitness efforts. While the company already had a foothold there thanks to Google Fit, and Fitbit devices by themselves have remained pretty popular (even if not "smartwatch-y" enough to make it to our best smartwatches list), the addition of Fitbit to the Pixel Watch is making Google take Fitbit way more seriously within its ecosystem. Now, Fitbit can link to Health Connect, letting you sync your health and fitness data effortlessly.
Withings Body+ smart scale review: A stylish companion to track your body composition
You shouldn't have to choose between beauty and brains
Setting fitness targets and defining a new, healthier routine isn’t too hard. What’s more demanding is staying on top of these goals and making sure you stick to your new lifestyle in the long run. Thankfully, there are different ways you can ensure you’re following your new objectives with the help of dedicated health and fitness apps and smart fitness trackers.
Google Pixel At a Glance widget now includes Air Quality Index (AQI) alerts
That's one more thing the At a Glance widget can do
Since Google introduced the Pixel 6 in 2021, the company's At a Glance widget has also improved by leaps and bounds. Monthly Feature Drops have transformed the unassuming little widget into an indispensable productivity tool that displays flight status, Nest Doorbell alerts, and fitness-related information, among other things. Google said its June Feature Drop would improve the At a Glance widget with Air Quality Index (AQI) data.
Period-tracking apps face intense data privacy scrutiny in wake of Roe reversal
Some might be better off with a paper journal
There are many consequences to the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. In addition to relinquishing federal protections for the right to abortion, it also overturned a loosely-couched constitutional right to privacy as determined in Roe v. Wade. At the same time HR departments across the country scramble to figure out what to do, manufacturers of women's birth control, contraception, and fertility products are dealing with the challenges of protecting the privacy of their customers while maintaining advanced web-integrated features.
Samsung's Galaxy Watch5 might not measure body temperature after all
Apple couldn't make it work and Samsung isn't likely to, analyst says
Can a smartwatch tell what your body temperature is just by smacking a sensor on top of your wrist? That's what Samsung is apparently trying to get this year's Galaxy Watch5 to do. But will it really? One expert seems to think that if Apple can't do it, then neither can the other side.
Fitbit follows Apple Watch's lead with stroke-preventing tech
AFib monitoring for a lower cost with longer battery life.
The forebears of today's best fitness trackers and smartwatches may have been little more than tiny notification buzzers and step tracking novelties, but we’ve always known they had the potential to save lives and help us identify serious issues before they become irreversible. Last month, Google highlighted its work with machine learning algorithms to advance healthcare, and now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just gave the go-ahead to roll out a new algorithm to Fitbit devices that will be even more effective at identifying people with atrial fibrillation (AFib), one of the leading signs that a person is at risk of a stroke.