Google brings new API for low-power sleep tracking on Android phones

There are several hundreds of wellness and fitness tracker apps on the Android ecosystem, but most users complain that their phones tend to get drained even on idle mode with the display off. This is mainly due to the apps constantly working in the background tracking user's activity such as physical movements and sleeping pattern via companion smart bands or watches.

Now, Google has come up with a special Application Programme Interface (API) that promises low-powered sleep tracking on Android phones.

"The Sleep API is a simple API that centralizes sleep detection processing in a battery-efficient manner. For this launch, we are proud to collaborate with Urbandroid, the developer of the popular alarm app, Sleep As Android," said Nick Grayson, product manager, Android, Google.

Android logo. Credit: Android

The Sleep API is now available to all wellness app developers through the latest Google Play services. This will greatly help small firms with limited budgets and divert their best engineering resources for creating other important features into the app. Also, Android users will be relieved that the phone will last longer through the day.

Once the new Sleep API makes its way to Android wellness apps, the latter will be able to make the best use of the on-device artificial intelligence model and efficiently utilise the device’s light and motion sensors as inputs with less power consumption.

However, like the other Activity Recognition APIs, for the new Sleep API to work properly, it needs to get the Physical Activity Recognition runtime permission from the phone owner to track sleeping pattern. This is not a complicated process, as the user need not have to tweak any settings in the phone; the fitness and wellness apps will offer pop-up notification on the screen to get permission.

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