AirPods may become more useful in the coming years to help users stay healthy. In Apple’s name, personal headphones are likely to include many hearing health-related features in the coming years.
AirPods and AirPods Pro seem to be some of the best devices to gain health features in the future with their long-lasting charge and in-ear standing. In this context, it is thought that headphones can offer advanced hearing health features in a few years.
Hearing potential could be much greater than currently offered
In Bloomberg’s “Power On” newsletter, Mark Gurman said he believes Apple will make upgrades to the AirPods lineup “to make it a health gadget in the next year or two.” It looks like this upgrade may include the ability to “receive some form of hearing data” using accessories.
Gurman says the “health gadget” elements will be a natural extension of what the Apple Watch offers to users, but its hearing potential could be much greater than what’s currently being offered.
Apple has been working on this for a long time.
Apple’s patent and patent filings point to AirPods developing biometric sensing capabilities using the ear and a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor to monitor heart rate and characterize blood flow in the ear skin.
There’s also data on applications dating back to 2017 that include things like an electrocardiogram sensor, impedance cardiograph, galvanic skin response, VO2 sensing, and thermometers.
Some patents dating back to 2014 also reveal that Apple is considering monitoring the heart rate, temperature and sweating of the headphone user. In other words, the company has been investigating this issue for many years.
Hearing giant technology company Apple offers some features, including “Live Listening”, to enhance the user’s hearing by picking up sound from an iPhone.
For now, none of these features we mentioned above have been approved by the FDA, and headphones are not equipped to replace a hearing aid for now. Still, Apple is believed to be working to make these and similar features more “official” in the future.
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