When Samsung made the bombshell announcement that it was scrapping Tizen for Wear OS 3, it promised not to overshadow the old Galaxy Watch. Now Samsung has announced that the Galaxy Watch, Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Watch Active, and Galaxy Watch Active 2 will get a new face and health features as part of One UI 4.

Autumn detection is nothing new on Samsung smartwatches, but today's update will give you the option to adjust the sensitivity of this feature. According to Samsung's press release, it says you can "choose to detect falls while standing still."Previously, Samsung's fall Detection feature was designed to detect serious falls while you were running or moving. Triggering this feature automatically sends an SOS message to a pre-selected contact. That said, the feature is limited to Samsung's newer Tizen Watch and won't appear on the first-generation Galaxy Watch or Galaxy Watch Active.
Another small health feature update is Group Challenges, which lets you track the competition from your wrist. The four smartwatches will also feature 10 new watch faces, which were introduced last summer with the Galaxy Watch 4. As for when these updates will be released, Samsung says they will be on Bluetooth devices first, with LTE coming later. The company also says you'll need to upgrade to the latest Galaxy Wearable App and Galaxy Watch plug-ins.
Overall, these aren't earth-shattering updates, but it's encouraging that Samsung hasn't given up on Tizen smartwatches -- especially since the Galaxy Watch Active 2 and Galaxy Watch 3 were pretty fresh when Samsung announced it was ditching Tizen. Google is also steadily adding and improving features of Wear OS 2, including Gboard and an improved Play Store. It's especially important to see Samsung and Google support older hardware, as the transition to the new unified Wear OS 3 will be a bumpy one. Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 is currently the only smartwatch with the platform, and a handful of existing Wear OS watches will be eligible for an upgrade in 2022.

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