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A “smart sleep tracker screen” looks like something you might imagine if you pulled the buzzwords of a tech product out of a hat, but it’s the latest Google product rumor about the ever-reliable 9to5Google . Earlier this week, a new Nest product arrived at the FCC with Project Soli on board, and after some research, sources at 9to5 are now saying it’s a new Nest Hub smart display with sleep tracking. I’m guessing the idea here is a bedside alarm clock that will scan you with radar waves while you sleep.
The Project Soli backing revealed in the FCC filing is a tiny radar chip developed by Google in-house for gesture detection. The chip has been in development for at least six years now by Google’s ATAP group and has yet to achieve commercial success. The original promise was that Soli would be able to detect fine finger movements like the virtual tapping of a button or the spinning of a dial, but commercial models never came close to that level of fidelity. Soli debuted on the Pixel 4, where it could only detect large hand movements, and that was a failure enough that it didn’t make it to the Pixel 5. The chip is currently in the new thermostat. Nest, but it only replaces the old motion sensor and doesn’t appear to provide any new, improved capabilities or features.
Google partners pitched the idea of a Google Assistant smart display as a bedside alarm clock, notably in the Lenovo Smart Clock, but Google itself did not make one. Some of Google’s smart displays come with cameras for video calling and face ID, but it’s easy to imagine consumers hesitating to put a camera in the bedroom. The Soli radar would allow Google to track user movements without seeing the horrific details. Today, Google’s smart displays and speakers use ultrasonic sonar for basic presence detection, but it’s possible that Soli could deliver higher fidelity.
The Project Soli aerial gestures that were released for the Pixel 4 also seem to be a bit more useful on a smart screen than a phone. The Pixel 4 could detect an arm wave to skip music or a flat hand to silence an alarm. These weren’t particularly useful as a phone is almost always by your side, offering a more precise touchscreen that’s probably close at hand, but what about a smart display? Since a smart screen is visible across the room and you don’t take it with you, you’re more likely to interact with it from a distance. If the Nest Hub version of Soli has any reach type, some form of hand gestures for content control might be useful.
It’s unclear why consumers would want to let Google track their sleep patterns. Sleep tracking has primarily been the realm of fitness trackers and smartwatches, and Google isn’t really competing in these areas anymore. Google has a smartwatch platform, Wear OS, but it’s basically dead. The last major Wear OS update was in 2018, and Google recently killed the Wear OS closest thing to a great app, Google Fit Bodybuilding. Google is currently working on offsetting its acquisition of Fitbit with regulators, but Fitbit is not a winner in wearable devices either. It was one of the early players in the fitness tracking trend, but its market share has slumped to single digits now that competitors have emerged, with companies like Xiaomi taking the low end and Apple the. top of the line. If Google can’t track sleep through a viable fitness platform, I guess a smart alarm clock is the best thing to do.
9to5Google reports that “the new Nest Hub with Soli is coming this year” and “we are told it will arrive as soon as possible”. The site also notes that the FCC file that launched its investigation has a confidentiality claim that is expected to expire in July, so we’ll likely know more about the product before that date.
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