How to use Heart Rate Monitor on your Galaxy S5
One of the most important advantages offered by Samsung in its Galaxy S5 is the built-in Heart Rate Monitor that lets you keep up on your health without needing any additional accessories. The Korean company had initially offered us the S Health app on its Galaxy S4, an app that tracks and logs your activities and the balance of calories, not to mention the included sensors that can easily measure your motion and steps and even to monitor the environment, but now is offering us even more than that.
Samsung has integrated its heart rate sensing technology into the same housing that holds the camera’s LED flash of its Galaxy S5, still maintaining the handset more than slim at the same time. Galaxy S5 heart rate monitor is completely different from all the other traditional heart rate sensors as long as Galaxy S5 heart rate monitor uses light to check your blood flow beneath the skin. By taking in consideration the blood flow patterns, the handset calculates and finally reports your current heart rate.
Although the results from Galaxy S5 heart rate monitor are indeed accurate enough for daily usage, remember that this is far from scientific way to measure heart rate. Most professional wearable heart rate monitors analyse Electrocardiography signal in order to do so and those results are the ones that we can really consider as being reliable. Even more, we want to be clear about the fact that Galaxy S5 cannot monitor the heart rate continuously, so don’t see it as a medical device. If you need to monitor your heart rate for medical reasons, this is not an option to take in consideration, but one for fitness and exercise usage only.
So, if you are curious to see how it really works (and it really works for what it is) or if you’re thinking about introducing a regular fitness schedule and not only, the Galaxy S5’s integrated Heart Rate Monitor won’t disappoint you, so here we are to show you more about it:
How to Access Galaxy S5 Heart Rate Monitor:
- Samsung’s Galaxy S5 Heart Rate Monitor can be accessed by launching S Health and tapping “Heart Rate” at the bottom of the app;
- You’ll immediately be taken to a screen that gives you a prompt to place your finger on the heart rate sensor (this sensor is placed on the back of your Galaxy S5, under the camera next to the LED flash);
- If you want an accurate reading of your heart rate, you have to tap the on-screen button to begin and then place your index finger on the heart rate sensor;
- Don’t move around while the sensor is doing its reading; you just have to sit and have patience;
- This won’t take too long, you can be sure of that! It’s a matter of seconds and you’ll see your heart rate displayed on the screen along with a corresponding date and time for the reading was taken.
How to find out More Details:
If you have repeatedly checked your heart rate by using the method above, don’t forget that you also have the possibility to look back at the history of your heart rate in hour, day and month intervals through the app. To be more precise, after taking your heart rate, don’t hesitate to tap the triangle-shaped button in the bottom right corner of the screen and you’ll see displayed all of your heart rate activity over time.
Feel free to use the tabs at the top to choose between a specific hour, day and month history counters and a line chart showing every single option offers a chart with the heart rate fluctuations that you are interested about. Tapping into each reading will show you the heart rate for that precise day.
If you want even more details, we have another option for you. You can also tap the button at the top of the interface to enter the log. Here you can find a daily breakdown of your readings, as well as the exact times for each of them with an average heart rate reading per day. If you feel that one or more of your readings were incorrect, you can select and delete specific entries by using the menu button in the top right corner of the screen.
As for those of you are wondering about those heart rate monitor apps from the Google Play store, we can tell you that most of them work just as this Galaxy S5 heart rate monitor, but they are using the rear camera to get the input. In these conditions, we can only guess that they are not as accurate as Galaxy S5′s heart rate sensor.
So, despite of the fact the Galaxy S5 heart rate monitor cannot be considered a professional tool, is more than accurate when it comes to physical exercises. And if you want to know more about Galaxy S5, please check our How To section.
