South Korean regulators have approved Samsung Electronics' mobile app for measuring blood pressure, the company announced.
The app will be available on the Galaxy Watch beginning in the third quarter of this year, Samsung said Tuesday.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety cleared use of the app as an over-the-counter, cuffless blood pressure-monitoring app based on pulse wave analysis, according to the tech giant.
Samsung said users will have to calibrate their device at least every four weeks to ensure accuracy.
"Globally, high blood pressure is known to significantly increase your risk of brain, kidney and heart disease, including stroke and coronary heart disease when not managed properly," Samsung said in a statement.
"By helping users measure and track their blood pressure, the Samsung health monitor app gives people great insight into their health and allows them to make more informed decisions to lead healthier lives."
Samsung announced Monday that it is also developing image sensors with quality comparable to human eyes, which match a resolution of around 500 megapixels.
By comparison, today's DSLR cameras offer 40-mp resolution while top-end smartphones promise around 12 mp.
"Simply putting as many pixels as possible together into a sensor might seem like the easy fix, but this would result in a massive image sensor that takes over the entirety of a device," Samsung Executive Vice President Park Yong-in said.
"In order to fit millions of pixels in today's smartphones that feature other cutting-edge specs like high screen-to-body ratios and slim designs, pixels inevitably have to shrink so that sensors can be as compact as possible."
