Summary
While the fancy new Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 series is the first watch running Wear OS 6 and Samsung’s One UI 8 update, those with last year’s Galaxy Watch Ultra are in for a treat. Ahead of schedule, Samsung just announced that One UI 8 is rolling out today to the Watch Ultra.
Late last month, Samsung released several Android 16 betas, including abeta of One UI 8for select Galaxy Watch users. So, while we knew the update was coming, the latest announcements suggested it’d arrive later this year.
Reddit usersstarted receivingthe stable and official version of One UI 8 (based on Wear OS 6) on the 2024 Galaxy Watch Ultra late last night, and this morning,Samsung made it official. It’s packed with a bunch of new features you’ll love, but unfortunately, we haven’t heard anything about the Galaxy Watch 7.
As usual, this smartwatch update should improve performance, elevate battery life a tiny bit, and brings some of the latest enhancements from Google’s Wear OS 6 platform. That said, Samsung made all sorts of changes to the software, built to pair beautifully with its smartphones, and added a slew of new health, wellness, and fitness features.
Like we saw on stage during theGalaxy Watch 8 unveiling, this update for the existing Galaxy Watch Ultra (2024) includes a neat new Running Coach, Vascular Load tracking, Antioxidant Index, new multi-info tiles, and much more. According to Samsung, these features will help owners “build healthier habits through motivational insights.”
Interestingly enough, the Bedtime Tracking controls shown off earlier this year weren’t mentioned anywhere in Samsung’s announcement. So either those features got scrapped, or they’ll arrive in a future update.
Otherwise, you’re able to explore a nice visual overhaul, and that’s especially true with the multi-info tiles, which are super helpful and customizable. Samsung’s multi-info tiles pull everything important off your watch into one customizable view—health metrics, calendar information, weather, and more—making information easier to see and find.
Then, similar to the Galaxy S25 series and One UI 7, the Now Bar should be better than ever with this new smartwatch update. The Now Bar shows information like music that’s playing, navigation directions, and sports scores in an automatically updating widget-like bar. It’s also worth noting that Google has slowly removed its Google Assistant from smartwatches, andyou’ll have Geminiaccess once the update completes.
So, charge up your Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, check for updates, and start downloading the roughly 1.9GB upgrade to One UI 8. Then, we’ll report back once we hear more about when it’ll arrive for Pixel watches and the Galaxy Watch 7.
