Google's new Nest Hub version to be your Sleep Watchdog

In recent years, portable smart devices like Nest Hub have made their way in technology and growing markets. Smart screen devices are the following new evolution in this space, and this evolution is expanding at a tremendous rate. These devices offer the same feature as smart speakers, but the addition of screens allows them to give a more visual context to responses while opening additional applications.

Like the Amazon Echo Show with its giant 10-inch screen and little brother Echo Show 5, many smart devices with screens are already on the market. Some devices are positioned as digital watches, such as the 4-inch Lenovo Smart Clock and Amazon Echo Spot. All of these devices perform more or less similar functions, but the Google Nest Hub has something else to put on the table for its customers.

Google’s latest version of the Nest Hub, a 7-inch smart screen, will be paired with Google’s latest sleep sensitivity technology for its customers. The company claims to have perfected the technology by studying 15,000 people who sleep during a combined 110,000 nights. But the latest Nest Hub may also announce a new trick. If you enable it, the device will also monitor the ways of sleeping outside the bed, denying the need to carry a fitness device or other potentially annoying device in bed.

The feature, which Google intends to offer for free at least this year, relies on a new chip called that Google calls Soli, which uses radar to detect movement, including the depth of a person’s breathing. 

 Sleep Sensing uses Motion Sense to track the sleep of the person closest to the screen. With low-energy motion radar, Motion Sense detects movement and breathing. Other sensors in the Nest Hub detect sounds such as coughing, snoring, and environmental factors such as light and room temperature. In this way, Sensing Sleep determines when you went to bed and how long you slept, and the quality of your sleep.

Nest Hub will be able to generate weekly sleep reports with easily understandable breakdowns or problems in sleep duration and quality, how often the user gets up at night, and the frequency of snoring and coughing, along with tips developed in consultation with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

People with difficulty sleeping may find this new feature next to their ally. Still, this new addition in Google’s ever-expanding technology could lead to a particular concern on privacy, given Google’s long history of online surveillance to collect personal information, such as interests, habits, and location, to help sell the digital ads that generate most of its revenue.