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Google's Health Connect Finally Gets Step Tracking Through Your Android Phone

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  Published in Health and Fitness on Saturday, September 20th 2025 at 7:42 GMT by Android
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Google’s Health Connect Gains Full‑Phone Step‑Tracking – What It Means for Android Users

When Google first announced Health Connect, the promise was clear: a unified, privacy‑first platform for health and fitness data on Android. Yet, for more than a year, the service’s most fundamental feature—step counting—remained the exclusive domain of wearables and select smartphones. That began to change in a quietly dramatic update that landed on Android phones last week. Google’s Health Connect is now capable of measuring steps directly from the device’s internal sensors, bringing a core piece of fitness data into the hands (or rather, the pocket) of every Android user.

The Road to Phone‑Based Steps

Health Connect debuted in 2023 as a cloud‑agnostic API that let developers aggregate data from wearables, phones, and other health platforms. It was meant to be the single source of truth for users’ health metrics, enabling apps to read and write data—such as heart‑rate, sleep, and activity—through a unified interface. But the initial rollout was constrained: the phone itself couldn’t track steps; it had to pull data from a paired smartwatch, fitness band, or a third‑party app.

“Android was always going to rely on external wearables for accurate motion sensing,” noted a Google engineer in a blog post that accompanied the Health Connect launch. “The problem is that not every user owns a wearable, and many phone manufacturers have disabled step‑counting in the OS for battery‑saving reasons.” That limitation meant that the full potential of Health Connect as a personal health hub was unrealized.

Over the past months, Google has quietly patched the underlying sensor drivers in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and updated Google Play Services. The new firmware enables the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope to run a low‑power, high‑accuracy step‑counting algorithm. The change is now part of Android 15, shipped in a beta release that developers have already begun to test.

How It Works on the Phone

The update leverages the phone’s existing motion‑sensing stack but rewires it to feed data into the Health Connect service. When a user activates step‑tracking in any Health Connect‑enabled app—such as Google Fit or third‑party fitness trackers—the phone’s sensors start a “background worker” that counts strides, applies a filtering algorithm to reduce noise, and writes the count to Health Connect. The algorithm is calibrated using a small calibration routine that asks the user to walk a short distance with the phone in a pocket or hand‑held position; the calibration step adjusts for sensor bias and personal stride length.

This approach means that the step data is now captured at the device level, regardless of whether the user is wearing a smartwatch. Importantly, the data is stored locally on the phone and synced to the user’s Google account only when they grant explicit permission. Users can see the step counts in their Google Fit dashboard or any other app that pulls data from Health Connect, just as they could see data from a Fitbit or a Garmin.

Integration with Google Fit and Beyond

Google Fit has been the most visible consumer app that consumes Health Connect data. With the new phone‑based step tracking, Fit can now report a single source of step data that doesn’t fluctuate between devices. “We’re excited to give our users a more consistent activity history,” said a Fit product manager. “No more double‑counting or gaps when a phone is swapped or a smartwatch is removed.”

Third‑party developers, too, will benefit. The Health Connect API now includes a new “StepCounterSource” enum that distinguishes between phone‑derived data and wearable‑derived data. Developers can choose to display both or prefer one over the other. That flexibility is useful for apps that want to combine phone steps with smartwatch steps for more robust metrics, such as estimating calories burned.

Moreover, the update opens doors for future expansions: Apple’s HealthKit and Apple Watch rely heavily on phone‑based step counting, and now Google can offer comparable functionality. It also levels the playing field for Android phones that previously lagged behind in health data fidelity. For instance, Pixel and OnePlus devices, long known for their reliable sensors, can now automatically feed step data into Health Connect without needing a paired device.

Privacy and Data Security

The rollout was accompanied by a refreshed privacy policy that outlines how Health Connect handles step data. Users can view the data stored on the device, delete it, or opt‑out of syncing entirely. The phone‑based algorithm runs entirely offline, and the raw sensor data is never sent to Google or any third‑party service unless the user explicitly shares it.

Google has also added a “privacy shield” layer that automatically masks step data in the Google Health app when the device is in a locked state. That move was prompted by user feedback about seeing activity metrics while the phone was left in a dark drawer. The shield can be toggled on or off, giving users full control over their visibility.

What’s Next for Health Connect?

The step‑tracking addition is just the first big leap for Health Connect. In the near term, Google plans to roll out similar on‑device tracking for heart rate and sleep, leveraging the phone’s camera for photoplethysmography (PPG) and the microphone for sleep noise analysis. Developers will receive new SDK updates that allow them to write custom algorithms to interpret sensor data, opening the door for niche health apps—such as mental‑wellness trackers that rely on gait patterns—to plug into Health Connect.

The overarching goal is to create a single, reliable health hub that doesn’t require users to juggle multiple apps or devices. By ensuring that core metrics like steps are natively captured by the phone, Google moves Health Connect closer to that vision.

Bottom Line

Google’s Health Connect has finally added the most essential piece of the puzzle: phone‑based step counting. The update, which arrived in Android 15’s beta, transforms every Android device into a capable health tracker, bridging the gap between wearables and smartphones. The feature is already visible in Google Fit and promises to make third‑party apps more accurate and easier to develop. And with privacy controls in place, users can rest easy knowing their step data stays under their control.

Whether the new step‑tracking will spur a wider adoption of Health Connect across the Android ecosystem remains to be seen. But for users who have long been limited to external trackers, the announcement is a welcome step toward a fully integrated, device‑centric health experience.