Samsung has now announced the rollout a brand new update to three of its top wearables, bringing new health and fitness features, better optimizations, new watch faces, and a One UI redesign.
The latter of those changes will likely be the most obvious, since it’s going to simplify the interface and reduce clutter, bringing it more in line with One UI on Samsung smartphones. That includes improvements to the graphics and more vibrant animations providing a more “visual experience” when achievements are reached.
One UI on smartphones center around ease-of-use in placing items easily within reach. For smartwatches, that’s going to mean fewer items on-screen at any given time and those will be better organized, summarily resulting in fewer distracting elements.
Customizations and more control over the interface and interactions are part of that too. Users will be able to control touch-based wake-up functionality, the timing or how often daily briefing updates appear, and whether or not Goodnight mode is turned on.
New watch faces are making their way over from the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active and will be available via the Galaxy Store after the update arrives.
Under the hood and new features
In terms of feature improvements, Samsung is starting with battery optimizations under the hood. Users will be able to customize their battery saver settings via brightness adjustments and screen timeout options but most of the changes are those end users might not notice. That’s because it involves changes to how the system automatically closes background apps and how it manages automated settings changes to prevent undesirable battery drain.
Fitness tracking is undergoing some adjustment too, with the Daily Activities screen now showcasing an “at-a-glance” summary of movement, workout counts, and calories at first launch. That should make it easier for users who just want to get a relatively fast summary of their day to do so at the launch of an app without having to dig through any menus.
Tracking a given workout is going to be a lot more intuitive and faster as well since Samsung’s wearables will now enable users to select items on both the widget and in the Samsung Health app directly. That will lead to faster workout startups but the app will also continuously sync between devices for more accurate logging too.
Things get even better from there but only for the Samsung Galaxy Watch, which will exclusively get a new workout designed to track outdoor swimming.
Last but not least, and also exclusive to the Samsung Galaxy Watch, heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking will be improved after the update. The first improvement centers on a “High Heart Rate Alert” that will notify a user if their heart rate goes above a certain level, assuring that their workout or other activity stays within safe limits. Sleep tracking features will now provide information regarding how the wearer’s sleep compares to the average user in their age bracket.
The when and the where
Samsung hasn’t provided any details about exactly where or when the roll-out will take place. Instead, the company has indicated that which devices receive the update and when will vary from region to region, indicating a global rollout. That means the update is going take some time to land on every gadget in question but it should arrive eventually.
Large-scale rollouts from Samsung have typically taken several months to complete.