Samsung is rolling out a new software update for the Gear S3 and Gear Sport smartwatches. The company has already announced that it will shut down its “S Voice” service on June 1st. It’s obvious to expect this new update to replace the S Voice with Samsung’s own Bixby voice assistant.
The Galaxy Watch launched in 2018 and is the first smartwatch to launch with Bixby. While users might have preferred Google Assistant, Bixby itself is much better than the S Voice. The Samsung Gear S3 with a rotating bezel was launched in 2016. A year later, in 2017, the company launched the Gear Sport smartwatch. It’s good to see the company still offering software support for these older smartwatches.
Latest update now available in the US & South Korea
The new software update comes in at around 106 MB in size. While the latest update for the Gear S3 comes with the firmware version R760XXU2FTD4, the firmware version for the Gear Sport is R600XXU1CTD3. The OTA update is currently rolling out to users in the US and South Korea and will soon be available in the rest of the markets where the watches were sold.
However, there is no ETA mentioned for the same update for the cellular version of these smartwatches. Both the Gear S3 and Gear Sport smartwatches also get a few new features that were introduced with the Galaxy Watch Active 2. The update adds new emoticons with more skin tone options. There will be an indicator shown for the background running apps. A simple tap on the indicator will open that respective app.
New fitness tracking options added
Several improvements were also made on the UI front. The Always-on display will be easier to read while on charging or in battery saving mode. Users can also change the icon order in the quick panel. With this new update, both smartwatches will be able to detect sleep mode more effectively. The Timer and Stopwatch apps are also made more intuitive.
The Samsung Health app on the Gear S3 and Gear Sport now comes with a few new fitness tracking options. These include automatic swimming detection and lap-time monitoring for running and cycling sessions. Also, the smartwatches now display daily activity information.
Samsung with the Tizen OS-powered smartwatches is currently the second largest smartwatch brand in the world. As of Q1 2020, the company holds 13.9 percent market share. During the same period, Apple Watch tops the chart with 55 percent smartwatch market share.