Samsung Health will arm you with noise-warning tools to save your hearing

Lots of us use our smartphones and wearables to track our health, but what exactly does that encompass? The very concept of “health” is a lot more multi-faceted and nuanced than just “not sick” or “feeling good,” and we’ve developed dozens of metrics we can track in pursuit of all its forms, from calories burned during a workout, to time spent snoring at night. And while the problem with snoring is more about what it means for the person doing it than the person who might have to listen to it, today we’re very much thinking about loud sounds like that as we check out what Samsung Health is working on next.

Samsung Health already makes it easy to keep on top of plenty of you health stats, like heart rate, or dissolved blood oxygen content. And as we look under the hood of the app’s version 6.31.2.003 update, we’ve spotted work on one new card it appears to be adding to its home screen: noise.

Hearing damage that occurs through exposure to excessive noise can be a lot sneaker than many of us appreciate, and while you may not be eager to go stand next to a jet engine without ear protection, it could surprise you just how frequently you’re really coming into contact with noise that’s loud enough to contribute to a long-term problem.

In order to help keep you on top of your risk level there, Samsung Health has been preparing a new Noise card:

Here, you’ll quickly be able to get an average assessment of the volume levels you’ve been exposed to throughout your day. We still have some questions about exactly how frequently that will sample the noise your phone is exposed to (and correspondingly, you as well). And as you can see in the far-right screen, Samsung’s also working on an Advanced Measurement mode.

With that toggled on, instead of just getting your daily average noise exposure, you’ll also be able to get excessive noise alerts — both for ambient noise, and output produced by apps on your phone. In the case of the former, Samsung will give you a few options for the alert’s cut-off level — we just can’t help but think it would be nice to also include a little extra info in there for users who might not immediately appreciate what sort of volume levels those decibel figures represent.

Finally, Samsung’s developing a history screen to let you keep track of how frequently you’re getting these alerts, with weekly, monthly, and annual views available.

We still can’t say exactly when Samsung might be getting ready to push these new Health tools live, but we sure hope it’s soon, as this all sounds like a really nice upgrade — pun only slightly intended.