Samsung Gear smartwatches not forgotten as new Galaxy Watch features land
Samsung isn’t leaving owners of its older Gear smartwatches out in the cold, rolling out new features that recently debuted on the Galaxy Watch Active smartwatch.
Anyone with a Gear S3, Gear Sport or the other Samsung Galaxy Watch models will be able to enjoy Samsung’s One UI, which previously only appeared on the company’s smartphones before making the leap to the Active this year. The new UI was brought over with the hopes of decluttering the feel of Samsung’s software on its smartwatch and now it’s going to do the same for its other watches.
Essential reading: Best Samsung Galaxy Watch faces to try outIn addition to the arrival of that One UI, fitness features will be improved, too, with the ability to track workouts in a simpler way via the Samsung Health app and dedicated widget. Outdoor swimming has been added into the tracking mix for the Galaxy Watch only (the Gear S3 is not fit for the pool), which is good news for any open water swimming fans.
On the health front, you’ll get high heart rate alerts, more detailed sleep tracking and the addition of a Daily Activities screen viewable on your watch.
Samsung is also making tweaks in other places bringing new settings like the ability to enable or disable the Touch to wake-up feature. You can also control the frequency of Daily briefing updates and now Samsung’s Goodnight mode, which mutes the notification noise at night is making the leap onto the other Samsung watches. If you liked the look of some of those Samsung Galaxy Watch Active faces, a select few will be available too.
There’s improvements on the battery front as well, with Samsung having made performance tweaks to help extend the time you get with your watch before you need to grab that charger. This will be a source of good news for Galaxy Watch owners, who may have had mixed results getting the promised big battery life Samsung promised, particularly with its 46mm model Galaxy Watch.
The big update will start rolling out to compatible watches now, but will vary by region in terms of when those new features will be available.
True to form, Samsung has been pretty good about making sure owners of its older smartwatches get in on those new features. It did the same when it snagged the all-important Spotify support a few years ago and has continually rolled out software updates, which is good to see.
Source: EngadgetToday’s best smartwatch deals
