Transform Your Smartphone Into A Thermometer With This App

Did you know that you don’t have to own an expensive phone like an iPhone to access important health features? A new app called FeverPhone has been created by researchers at the University of Washington that can transform any phone into a thermometer.

There are already plenty of wearables on the market, such as the Apple Watch, with the feature, but it doesn’t come cheap, meaning the technology is limited to a premium audience. But if you have an app that can read body temperature, anyone with a smartphone can simply download it and use the feature. The best thing about the app is that you don’t need any special accessories to make the feature work.

According to the researchers, phones already have the technology to help them unlock the thermometer features. The device has a sensor called a thermistor, which measures the temperature of the phone and battery to avoid overheating. But how did they use the sensor to check body temperature? They tested it with a plastic bag filled with water that came into contact with the touch screen of different phones.

The researchers used this data to train their machine learning model, which helped them develop the FeverPhone app. But the work doesn’t end there. You need to place your phone screen in certain places so that the app’s sensor can read the temperature. To achieve the best result, the phone should be held on the forehead for about 90 seconds. When the app was ready for testing, 37 participants were using it and the temperature was close to the real thing.

As the app is still undergoing internal testing, we cannot say whether it will be released anytime soon. And even if it were, the researchers would certainly need the approval of the healthcare authorities to make it a recognized entity in the market, based on the evaluations of which even medical professionals can guarantee and help people with treatment.