Back in July last year, Xiaomi introduced a new health and fitness app called Mi Health. At launch, the app was quite barebones and included just a couple of fitness tracking features like step tracking, sleep monitoring, and menstruation cycle tracking. With MIUI 12, Xiaomi introduced a couple of new features to the app earlier this year, including improvements for the step counter, new sleep tracking features, and a sedentary reminder. Now, Xiaomi is adding heart rate monitoring to the app with its latest update.
The new heart rate monitoring feature on the Mi Health app will utilize your smartphone's camera to measure your heart rate. To use the feature, you will have to open up the new Heart rate section in the app and tap on the button in the bottom right corner. The following screen will ask you to completely block the camera and flash on your device with a finger. As soon as you do that, your device will start measuring your heart rate and you'll have to hold your finger in the same position until the progress bar reaches 100%.
Upon completion, the app will ask you to select your current state in a pop-up window. The window will include three options — General status, Resting state, and After exercise. You'll have to select one of three options, based on your current state, and press the View report button in the pop-up to see your current heart rate. The Test report will include your heart rate and an illustration highlighting whether your heart rate is slow, normal, or fast. The app's dashboard will also show you all your heart rate data collected over a period of time, allowing you to easily keep a track of the variations over the course of a day, week, or month. Check out the video embedded above to see the feature in action.
The new heart rate monitoring support is rolling out with version 2.7.4 of the Mi Health app and it should reach all users in the coming days. If you're interested in learning more about the technique used by the app to measure your heart rate, you can check out this paper.
Thanks to the MiuiSystemUpdates Telegram channel for the screenshots and video!