Galaxy Watch 4's latest update may be causing bad battery, broken sensors

Not long after it started rolling out, Samsung seems to have paused the rollout of its latest – and possibly final – Galaxy Watch 4 update due to some issues.

Samsung started rolling out One UI 8 Watch, based on Wear OS 6, to the Galaxy Watch 4 series earlier this month. In the time since, two issues have popped up.

Firstly, a number of users have reported bad battery life since updating. Some have noted that the watch is on track to drain its battery after around 12-15 hours, a far cry from the prior 24-hour-ish endurance. For others, the battery drain is much more extreme. Somehave found success in clearing the cache to improve battery life, but it’s hit or miss.

There have also been reports of the always-on display no longer working.

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A more pressing issue, though, seems to involve the sensors on the Galaxy Watch 4.

As SamMobile notes, a threadon Samsung’s forums shows a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic owner who, after updating to One UI 8 Watch, found themselves completely unable to use the key sensors on their watch. This means that features like health tracking are unavailable, but even means that the watch can’t detect when it’s on the user’s wrist, leaving it to be locked constantly if a passcode is in use. It would make features like Google Wallet or even basic notifications essentially unusable.

This one seems to be a niche issue, and might be hardware related as the user mentions that flipping the watch to the bottom of their wrist (palm side) weirdly makes the sensors work. In any case, though, it raises a red flag.

Together, these seem to have pushed Samsung to pause the update, as some users note that the update isn’t appearing on their watches, and user reports of the update rolling out have quieted in the past several days.

The Galaxy Watch 4 series is a little over 4 years old at this point, but even if this is the last major update, Samsung should be patching these problems in the near future.

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