The app provides a comprehensive sleep analysis with a breakdown of the different stages of sleep and overall sleep score, much like other fitness trackers. The sleep analysis includes a body temperature to detect variations that may impact sleep.
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It's a very odd thing to put on a fitness band, and we have no idea what this is like to use yet.Īmazon promises that Tone voice samples are encrypted and stored only on a wearer's phone (shared from the band via Bluetooth with the encrypted key), are deleted after analysis and won't be shared to the cloud or used to build machine-learning models. It will be limited to the band's microphone, but Amazon sounds open to exploring the idea on other devices, depending on how the early access response goes from first-wave wearers. And according to Amazon, the Tone feature is only available on the Halo band for now. It isn't intended as a form of psychological analysis, but it seems awfully hard to draw the line on a concept like this.Īmazon's been exploring the idea of emotional tone-sensing since at least 2018, but this is the first time it's approached the idea in any device. The idea, according to Amazon, is to help guide you to deliver better tones of voice and speaking styles, like a vocal form of good posture. The voice scanning pulls out the wearer's specific voice in conversations and delivers analysis with related emotional-tone words (like "happy," or "concerned" in the Halo app). You enable the microphones by tapping the side button and you'll know when the mic is off when a red LED lights up on the band. It takes periodic samples of your speech throughout the day if you opt in to the feature. The company says it's not intended to analyze the content of your conversation, just the tone of your delivery. The fitness band has two built-in mics to capture audio and it listens for emotional cues. It can let you know when you've sounded out of line, weirdly enough. Halo also offers a Tone analysis, which has nothing to do with body tone, but rather analyzes the nuances of your voice to paint a picture of how you sound to others. The scan images aren't viewed by anyone at Amazon and aren't used for machine learning optimizations." Watch that tone! All scan images are fully deleted within 12 hours. According to Amazon, "the images are processed in the cloud, but encrypted in transit and processed within seconds, after which they're automatically deleted from Amazon's systems and databases. That's why Amazon promises that the finished body scans stay on your phone and won't be shared with anybody, including the company, unless you opt into that. The sample body-scan images Amazon showed me look very personal - not necessarily something I'd ever want anyone else to see. Amazon doing this on a health platform makes it feel more so. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that's not surprising: The idea of body-scanning with a camera is already an awkward proposition. The entire process takes seconds.Īmazon's Halo app makes a 3D render of your body to analyze body fat, while the fitness band keeps tabs on sleep and activity. The app requires you to wear minimal form-fitting clothing and trust Amazon to take a picture of you wearing it. Once you take your photos, the app automatically eliminates everything else in the background, calculates body fat percent based on body indicators, and then creates a 3D model of your body, which is both cool and terrifying. The Halo app does it all using your smartphone camera. The gold standard in the medical world for body composition analysis is a DEXA scan (dual-energy absorptiometry), which can cost up to $100 at a lab. Rather than relying on weight, Halo focuses on body fat percentage, which is less volatile and takes a lot more time and work to change. You could literally work your ass off building muscle and burning fat, and not see the numbers on the scale go down. Plus muscle is more dense than fat, and a scale can't tell the difference between the two. The entire diet industry was built on it with programs, apps and devices that revolve around ways to lose pounds.īut weight can fluctuate daily based on factors including humidity, medication, menstrual cycle and illness. Most of us have been conditioned to obsess over our weight. Body fat analysis with a smartphone cameraĪmazon thinks the concept of weight loss is flawed, and that body fat is a much better predictor of health.