I felt a little warm before going to bed the other night, so I thought it would be a good idea to take my temperature. But I didn’t have to get up and dig my thermometer out of my cluttered bathroom medicine cabinet. Instead, I just grabbed my phone from my nightstand, opened an app, and slowly waved it across my forehead toward my temple.Â
That’s because I’ve been using Google’s Pixel 8 Pro, which was updated in January with the ability to take a person’s body temperature. The phone could previously only measure the temperature of nearby objects, like a cup of hot coffee or tea, but Google recently received the De Novo classification from the US Food and Drug Administration for body temperature, giving the green light to use the feature on people. Still, within the app Google says the tool is intended for information purposes rather than diagnosis and isn’t meant to replace a consultation with a health care provider.
The Pixel 8 Pro’s temperature-sensing capabilities are another example of tech gadgets bridging the gap between consumer and medical devices. Rather than smartphones, however, those health features typically come in fitness bands and smartwatches, which are in constant contact with the wearer’s wrist and boast high-tech sensors, the most advanced of which can detect signs of stress and sleep apnea and take ECG readings. The Pixel 8 Pro isn’t the first phone to have a temperature sensor, but the feature certainly isn’t common.Â
Read more: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs. Google Pixel 8 Pro: See How They Compare
In my experience, the Pixel 8 Pro’s readings differed slightly from those taken with a contactless forehead thermometer. Google says the Pixel 8 Pro’s readings should be more accurate than those of a standard forehead thermometer since the Pixel 8 Pro scans your temporal artery rather than only the center of your forehead.Â
But above all else, I’m still left wondering whether temperature sensing is necessary in a smartphone. The Pixel 8 Pro’s new…
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