Amazon became even more popular when it launched the Amazon Halo into the health and fitness world. It is a subscription service fitness band that aids you in unlocking a wide range of health metrics like body fat, sleep, and tone of voice analysis to determine how you sound to people.
The band has a similar look to the screenless Fitbit tracker, however, it comes with other few varying elements. It features a temperature measurement, a microphone that repeatedly scans the owner’s voice to determine the emotional tone, and so much more.
Also, the service is available as you can access it, but it comes with a membership fee. The membership portion starts at $65, lasting for the first six months and later $100 once the Early Access deal is closed, and then at $3.99 per month afterward.
The basic Amazon Halo subscription comes with a button but has not a fitness band to help you record your heart rate, the temperature on, and steps. The absence of this screen means that you have to rely on the mobile app to be able to see all your data. However, it does so much more aside counting your steps and tracking your weight.
Body Fat Analysis With a Smartphone Camera
Amazon strongly believes that the concept of weight loss is mistaken and that body fat is a better predictor of an individual’s health. Most people seem to be obsessed about their weight which has led them to seek out solutions to overweight.
The entire diet industry has built programs, devices, and apps that revolve around various ways to lose some pounds. However, this worrisome weight plight tends to fluctuate daily due to some factors like illness, menstrual cycle, humidity, medication, etc.
Also, it is essential to know that the muscle is denser than the fat in the body, and one can’t tell the difference between these two even while using a scale. You can stop building muscles and burning fats and still not see the numbers go down on a scale.
For this reason, Halo focuses on body fat percentage rather than relying on weight, which is less volatile and requires a lengthy period and works to change. The gold standard used in the medical field for the body composition analysis is a Dual Energy Absorptiometry (DEXA) scan.
It will cost you about $ 100 in a lab but can be avoided as the Halo app can do that using your smartphone camera. Once you have taken photos, the app will then help you to automatically remove every other thing in the background and help you to calculate the body fat percentage of your body on body indicators.
Afterward, it proceeds to create a 3D model of your body that’s both cool and scary. To make this possible using the app, all you have to do is to wear minimal, form-fitting clothing and wait for Amazon to capture you wearing them. This process takes just a few seconds.
If you feel uncomfortable, we don’t find it awkward as the whole idea of scanning with a camera is already a strange business. However, with Amazon doing this on a health platform, it is not such a bad idea. It will help you to know how you look and if there is a need for a change.
Also, Amazon has promised to keep the finished body scans of you private and only accessible to you and not shared with anyone, including the company, unless you opt to share. According to them, the images are in the cloud, but are encrypted during the transmission periods and are processed within a few seconds.
Afterward, they are fully erased automatically from the company’s system and database. Within just 12 hours, all the scanned images are completely erased, but the scan-pictures remain and are not viewed by anyone on Amazon.