When I was a kid who tagged along with my mom to the grocery store, I loved sitting in the blood pressure monitoring kiosks. The chair was so big! I could push a button! It would fill up a balloon that squeezed around my arm! I had no idea what the numbers meant on screen, but I knew something technological had happened, and that excited me.
Huawei is reportedly working on miniaturizing the blood pressure cuff for its next smartwatch, the Huawei Watch D. The concept is similar to the cuffs you’re familiar with, though much more involved than sitting in a chair and letting the machine do the work.
According to a watch instructional video leaked on Weibo, the Huawei Watch D will come bundled with an accessory that can be attached beneath the watch’s band when you need to take a blood pressure measurement. You’ll have tomeasure your wrist circumference for the right fit, and the accessory looks bulky (as you might expect from something that inflates).
When in use, the accessory will inflate like those grocery store blood pressure monitor cuffs and then register the result with Huawei Health. To take a reading, you have to lift your arm across your chest to the left side, though regulators haven’t yet cleared that methodology.