Samsung is planning a big software update for its Wear OS-powered wearables; namely the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lines. Later this year, it will be updating these smartwatches to One UI 5 Watch, and the company has detailed three key areas that it’s looking to improve.
Posting on its South Korean newsroom and spotted by SamMobile, the company revealed that the first of these areas is sleep, with One UI 5 Watch letting users access Samsung’s Sleep Coaching feature directly on their smartwatch – rather than having to use a smartphone – so you can get sleep tips and develop good habits.
The update also adds a Sleep Insights UI that places your sleep score and duration at the top of the screen, so these key details are easy to see at a glance.
Plus, the update aims to help you establish a sleep-friendly environment, by offering better connectivity with smart home devices, so they can react to your Sleep Mode parameters (perhaps, for example, by automatically lowering the lights or the temperature in the evening).
The second big area of focus with One UI 5 Watch is fitness, with the addition of personalized heart rate zones, real-time running analysis, and customized interval training programs. And if you have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, you’ll find that new running and walking activities will be added to its Route Workout feature.
The final area of focus is safety, with Samsung’s emergency SOS feature being updated to allow it to contact the emergency services, rather than just an emergency contact, and for you to be able to automatically provide your medical details to them.
Coming not so soon
So, this sounds like a big update but it might not land for a while. Samsung has said that One UI 5 Watch will launch in the second half of the year, but hasn’t provided any time frame more specific than that.
It’s likely, however, to coincide with the release of Wear OS 4, which we might not see until October, as that would be a year after Wear OS 3.5.
Still, it sounds like it should be worth the wait, and it also gives us an idea of what to expect from the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6, as that will surely either launch with One UI 5 Watch, or get the update as soon as it’s available.
