Samsung officially hints that the end of Galaxy Watch 4 updates is near

Ben Schoon | Jun 16 2025 - 2:15 pm PT

The Galaxy Watch 4’s days are numbered, as Samsung has just signaled the end of support for the 2021 release.

Samsung’s software commitment for smartwatches is far from what it provides for smartphones. After 3 years, the company’s support is all but complete. With that in mind, we recently pointed out that the Galaxy Watch 4 series would either be seeing its final major Wear OS update this year, or perhaps not see it at all.

With the launch of the One UI 8 Watch beta, Samsung has officially signaled that the Galaxy Watch 4 is on its last legs.

In a footnote regarding the beta’s release, Samsung says that the One UI 8 Watch release requires “Galaxy Watch 5 or newer.” While it doesn’t officially confirm that Watch 4 owners won’t get the One UI 8 Watch release (based on Wear OS 6), it certainly seems that way. It’s not a shock, as we realized recently that the new update may not arrive in time for Samsung’s 3-year cutoff date in August of this year.

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Users based in Korea and the United States with Galaxy Watch models (Galaxy Watch5 series or later released Galaxy Watch series) are eligible to join the beta program.

Does this mean that Samsung is abandoning the Watch 4 series altogether?

Not necessarily.

Security updates could certainly continue, but that doesn’t seem especially likely. Notably, the Galaxy Watch 3, released in 2020, hasn’t been updated since late-2023. If that pattern remains true for Galaxy Watch 4, which was last updated in May 2025, then these smartwatches are already running on borrowed time. That is, if Samsung’s official position on Galaxy Watch updates is still limited to three years. The 2021 statement regarding that timeline was technically for Tizen-based products, and it was an “at least” promise, leaving the door wide open to further updates.