Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic owners are having a tough time with Samsung’s new One UI 8 software. Early adopters report that core features are breaking down after the update, including wrist detection, ECG, and the always-on display — and some claim battery life is getting cut in half. If you depend on your watch for health monitoring or all-day battery life, the best idea might be holding off.
What Users Are Saying After Updating to One UI 8
Posts in Samsung’s community forums and on Reddit discuss a cluster of sensor problems. Wrist detection seems broken as the screen locks every time it turns off. ECG and body composition (BIA) measurements do not start or give errors. Other users, in one bizarre anomaly, have said sensors start working when the watch is turned face down with the sensor array pressed against their wrist — a clear indication of a detection or orientation issue, not hardware failure.
Factory resets are failing to consistently remedy the issues. Some owners say clearing the cache from recovery helps temporarily, but others are seeing no difference. The lack of consistency here has me leaning toward a software bug related to the new firmware rather than user-specific configuration issues.
Battery and Always-On Display Complaints
There are also more battery drain reports alongside sensor failures. It’s typical to see a short-term hit on battery life immediately after major software updates, as systems reindex and apps are updated, among other things, but some Watch 4 owners have claimed their run time is now almost half of what it was. The popular presumption seems to be the always-on display, with some owners reporting that enabling AOD accelerates battery loss and sometimes even apparently causes the lock screen loop when it hasn’t been able to detect wrist presence.
Interestingly, there are some Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic users making similar, if less widespread, complaints as well. That may hint the issue is related to system-level changes in One UI 8 on Wear OS rather than anything specific to the hardware from 2021.
Is the Galaxy Watch 4 One UI 8 Rollout on Hold?
Samsung has not yet made a public statement. But according to multiple users, the update option has now disappeared from within the Galaxy Wearable app, in line with reports from industry outlets that Samsung may be quietly halting distribution. Soft holds like this are boilerplate when a vendor is making sure it’s okay to release a hotfix without an actual build recall.
Why These One UI 8 Issues Can Happen on Galaxy Watch 4
One UI 8 on the Watch 4 series is a more significant leap than it sounds. The software is built on the fresh Wear OS core that premiered on last year’s Galaxy Watch 4 line, and it also upgrades sensor frameworks leveraged by Samsung Health and Samsung Health Monitor. Wrist detection generally fuses information obtained from the optical heart-rate sensor, accelerometer, and capacitive touch signal. If the orientation handling or sensor calibration tables are not correct even just a bit, you can notice symptoms such as reversed wear detection, wrong locks, and failed ECG/BIA init.
The inverted “fix” users stumbled across is a telltale sign that the system is interpreting strap orientation or hand-dominance settings incorrectly. That’s not a problem that necessarily goes away after a reset, which is why it points to a firmware patch as the most likely solution.
What to Do if You Already Updated to One UI 8
A few mitigations can help until a patch arrives; none is foolproof, though:
- Turn off always-on display and raise-to-wake to minimize lock cycles and conserve battery.
- Reassess wrist preference and hand dominance in settings, then restart the watch.
- Clear cache in recovery and re-pair with the Galaxy Wearable app; some users report temporary success after doing this.
- With health features, make sure the Samsung Health Monitor app is up to date and re-measure if on-device calibrations advise; during measurements, ensure a snug fit.
If ECG or BIA is important for your daily use, please limit usage until a fix arrives, as the above problem may lead to unreliable data.
Should You Update Your Galaxy Watch 4 to One UI 8 Now
If you have a Galaxy Watch 4 or Watch 4 Classic and haven’t updated yet, the smart play is to hold off. The latest feedback suggests some real step-backs in health and usability — and there are early signs that Samsung may pause the rollout while it gets things fixed up. In practice, vendors address something like this with a small build update to fix sensor calibration and power management (this can also happen in the same release cycle).
For now, you’ll be wise to keep an eye on Samsung’s community posts and third-party sites that track such things for a solid unofficial read on your upgrade prospects. When a follow-up build drops and reception’s favorable — on the wrist detection, ECG/BIA, AOD, and battery fronts in particular — you can feel safer about proceeding. Until then, there’s no guaranteed better way to get your Watch 4 working as it should than staying put on the previous firmware.
Sources: User reports on Samsung’s community forums and Reddit, industry tracking by SamMobile and 9to5Google, and specifications for One UI Watch 8 on Wear OS.