by Dan Moren
Samsung’s antioxidant sensor fooled by Cheez-Its
The Verge’s Victoria Song dives into the “antioxidant sensor” on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 with some surprising (or not) results:
I colored my thumb with a yellow-orange marker. Wouldn’t you know it? My Antioxidant Index shot up to 100. Next, I colored it with a blue marker. My score dropped to zero. Unfortunately, my color-based hypothesis was foiled by a piece of roasted broccoli. It, too, scored 100 and is, in fact, rich in carotenoids.
Perhaps the blackberry had failed because, when pressed against the sensor, it exploded in a mess of purple juice that was subsequently difficult to clean from the watch. Perhaps I was deficient in my antioxidant consumption. Or so I thought, until the Cheez-It.
This piece is a great example of one of the issues facing the health wearable field—and it’s hardly unique to Samsung: the sensor arms race.
The truth is there are health metrics that would be genuinely interesting and helpful to people—things like blood pressure and glucose levels—that are simply very hard to implement (perhaps even impossible by current technological standards) in a smartwatch.
But the market keeps moving forward, and that never-ending arms race encourages companies to keep adding new sensors and features of questionable usage. Even Apple’s been plagued by this in the past, which is one reason features like the Apple Watch’s temperature sensor are described with very careful language: “The temperature sensing feature is not a medical device and is not intended for use in medical diagnosis, treatment, or for any other medical purpose.”1
Is Samsung’s antioxidant sensor, which seems to be basing more of its readings on the color of your skin than any actual scientific data, the pinnacle of this movement? Personally, I doubt we’ve reached peak ridiculousness quite yet, but I think it’s coming.
Song’s overall point here is well taken—that you should take most of these sensors and metrics with a grain of salt2:
Even if a bunch of science went into developing detection algorithms using high-tech sensors, there’s always going to be errors and room for misinterpretation. This seems obvious, but it’s easy to get sucked into the quantified rat race toward perfection. If tracking a specific metric makes you feel worse about yourself, you’re allowed to take a break from it — or even decide it’s not worth paying attention to. None of this is meant to be taken that seriously.
Likewise, a good reminder that you always need to consider that these sensors aren’t altruistic productions; they’re features on a product that a company wants to sell you.
- I also love how the feature is described, with a straight face, as the perfectly natural “nightly wrist temperature.” Who among us has not been concerned about the temperature of their wrists? This is a case of doing exactly what it says on the tin. ↩
- Though not too much salt, because you don’t want to raise your blood pressure. ↩