DealNTech Mobiles, PCs, and All Things Tech
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 came out in 2021 and is still a trendy smartwatch. Recently, we saw the price drop to around 8000 INR during the festive season, and the watch sold like hotcakes.
It’s an excellent overall package and arguably much better value than its successor, the Watch 5. The Watch 4 already has everything you need in a smartwatch.
It ships with a ~1.4″ Super AMOLED display, which is pretty sharp at 321 PPI. The watch has an IP68 rating and can stay underwater up to 50m depth.
Watch 4 ships with all the essential sensors, like a heart rate monitor and blood pressure monitor, and is also ECG Certified. The 5nm Exynos W920 chip delivers decent battery life, usually over one day.
The Galaxy Watch 5 didn’t bring anything significant to the table. It shares the same chip, amount of RAM, and storage, and it ships with a more recent version of wearOS.
There’s a new sleep coaching feature, and the practicality depends on your use case. The battery life is slightly better on the Watch 5, and we also have better build quality. We also saw a price bump with the Watch 5.
While the wearOS+ OneUI for watches combo usually works well and also has good optimization, bugs are inevitable.
Some updates go wrong because of unintentional developer oversight or inadequate testing, and this looks like the case with a new firmware update for the Watch 5 and 4.
After a recent update, many Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 4 users are facing problems with the “raise wrist to wake” gesture. The feature is convenient since it allows you to see the time and other important information without tapping the screen to wake up.
Usually, the screen stays on until you move your wrist away from your line of sight or until you put your wrist down. However, after this update, the watch turns off within 1 or 2 seconds.
The problem is understandably frustrating since users now have to use Tap to Wake to access their information.
Many people on Reddit and Twitter report problems with the latest firmware update, and it isn’t restricted to the latest Galaxy Watch 5 since people using the Watch 4 are facing similar issues.
We didn’t see any replies from Samsung about the problems, and the issue isn’t officially confirmed. You can try the basic troubleshooting methods such as restarting the watch, unpairing and repairing, etc.
If your watch doesn’t have these problems, we recommend staying on your existing firmware. The new update could cause issues.
We can’t predict the scale of this issue and how widespread it is. But there are plenty of such reports across social media platforms. It’s also happening to brand-new units, leaving people wondering whether they have defective units.
Other people report flickering screen problems with the watch. Turning off Tilt to Wake and Touch to Wake could be a potential workaround. This is only a temporary solution since the problem returns if you lock and unlock the watch.
Since the bug is experience-breaking, we hope developers take this seriously and solve it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, you may convey your grievances to Samsung directly using their customer support page or product feedback page.
MG
I have this issue, and Samsung (on Twitter) is basically playing dumb.
They want me to take a video of it, but since it doesn’t happen every time, capturing it on video has proven difficult.
Meanwhile, I sent them a link to and quoted from this article. But I doubt that will make an impression on the social media team.