A first look at the Android AirPop Active+ Halo Smart mask experience (updated)
The software hasn’t updated in the past few days as far as I can tell, but it appears that the backend to the service did. As such today, 51 days after I started reviewing this, with multiple sketchy events along the way, I got to use it on Android… finally.
Update June 9, 2021: disconnects, unable to load data, about 40 second use before having to restart it
Updated May 10, 2021 at the end (spoiler, it’s completely broken again)
TL;DR – The experience is about as bad as you’d expect, but it’s terrible in a new way. I would still advise staying away until resolved.
Pairing went smoothly, that was my last positive experience with this. Updating firmware was forced, it failed, repeat a few times until it finally worked. This was with my phone about 7 inches away from the mask.
When the update finally worked and it connected I ended up being told it had recorded 9 breaths this week. This after I’d been wearing it all morning. OK, guessing perhaps it didn’t initialize or something? I wore the mask around work and continued to exist breathing in and out.
It claimed a filter wasn’t installed, but that’s because 51 days ago I couldn’t scan the barcode because I couldn’t use the software. I recorded 9 breaths in a sync and was told I’d saved myself from the pollution equiv of 5 cigarettes. Er, no.
It claimed I was in Lockland, TN. I do not know where this is and neither does Google. There’s a street called Lockeland about 11 miles away, but that’s with an E in the name.
I set a breathing color, the Halo flashed it once, that was the end of that. No idea.
Localization tells me that one of my pictures was from me working out for one foot, 44 inches having walked 0.1km. Er… ok, not harping on this but localization should not be turning time into distance measurements and should realize I live in a metric-denying country.
Claims I’m breathing about 13 breaths a minutes which as I was going up and down stairs and have been somewhat ill, no… I’m huffing. Fluffy huffing as well as sick huffing.
Multiple disconnects during active workout (which consisted of my walking around the building a bit)
Overall, ouch… still armature hour software. What I’m seeing on the Android experience could be better done with a calculator app.
Update May 10, 2021
Within the past 3 days they released another version that said it was tested on a variety of devices. I installed it (my device was listed) and now it just crashes when you launch it. Once again completely unusable as opposed to just widely broken.
