As the Galaxy Watch 8 series starts shipping out to some lucky customers, Samsung’s making another kind of delivery to existing Galaxy Watch Ultra owners.
Samsung is officially launching One UI 8 Watch for existing smartwatches today, beginning with the Galaxy Watch Ultra. Today’s update brings everything Samsung detailed on stage at Unpacked a couple of weeks ago, including Running Coach, Vascular Load tracking, and Antioxidant Index. Strangely, though, Bedtime Tracking isn’t mentioned in today’s announcement, despite being one of the marquee health features first demoed in last month’s initial One UI 8 Watch beta announcement.
This upgrade also includes some non-health improvements, including Multi-Info Tiles, Samsung’s in-house Now Bar tool, and, of course, Gemini integration, which has been making its way to other Wear OS watches over the past week. This is also our first official glimpse of Wear OS 6 out in the wild, before it eventually expands to other wearables like the Pixel Watch.
There’s no mention of the Galaxy Watch 7 in today’s announcement, suggesting that non-Ultra owners will have to wait a while longer to see Samsung’s latest wearable software in action. Considering shipments of Samsung’s “new” Ultra model — complete in its fresh navy blue hue — are making their way to customers’ doorsteps right now, though, it makes a certain amount of sense. Outside of that color difference and a doubling of its base storage, these are practically identical watches. If the software’s ready, why wait?
Considering Galaxy Watch 7 devices were included in that brief beta window, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if fans don’t have to wait too much longer to add the Now Bar to their wrists. As for current Galaxy Watch Ultra owners: keep an eye out for a pending update.
It’s your last chance to save on Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 pre-orders at Samsung. In addition to saving up to $1,000 in trade-in value, you can score a storage upgrade for free on both devices, and $50 in additional credit for using 9to5Google‘s links.
These offers end on July 24th, so don’t wait. Samsung’s new foldables, alongside the budget-ish Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, and the Galaxy Watch 8 and 8 Classic, start shipping on July 25th.
More on Samsung:
- Galaxy Z Fold 7 display is rated for 500,000 folds, 150% more than previous models
- Is the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic a meaningful upgrade over the Watch 6 Classic?
- Samsung prepares One UI 8 release with Good Lock updates, new homescreen customization [Gallery]
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