What is the NEW Google Health Connect – Should I care?

App Link: Google Play

Google and Samsung are taking their partnership one step further with Health Connect. We assumed that there was a deep partnership emerging between the two companies when Samsung Galaxy Watch4 was released with exclusive access to Wear OS 3. Now we know that the two companies are taking the link up much more seriously.

More: Google Fit – Activity Tracking

More Samsung Health app

Google Health Connect is a collaboration between Google and Samsung to simplify an open platform for 3rd party apps to help share fitness & wellness data. It very much mimics what Apple does in this area allowing you to set specific permissions about which elements of your data are shared and how they are shared.

Specifically of interest is the announcement that Samsung is adopting this for their Galaxy wearables. It’s a pretty obvious thing that Samsung needed to do; as we see with Apple, if the watch/phone maker opens up the data it collects to 3rd party apps then the customer can significantly benefit.

Of course, this will probably tie-up with the new Fitbit Watches this year, plus the new Google Pixel watch and Samsung Watch5. All of which is DEFINITELY happening.

There are various accompanying press releases that come with this news. However, I won’t bore you with their supreme blandness. It seems that the larger the corporation is the longer its press releases can be without actually saying anything.

Bottom line: Google and Samsung agree to a common health & fitness data platform which will help you use more apps on your data.