Samsung has released the first One UI 8 Watch beta firmware for the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra. This comes after the company initially announced the WearOS 6-based skin and its new health features in mid-June.
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The wait’s really heating up now
For now, Samsung has commenced the One UI 8 Watch beta program in its home market, South Korea, and the US. In the latter region, the beta build is only available for Galaxy Watch 7 Bluetooth variants and LTE models on the T-Mobile network, including that of the Ultra.
The ZYFE firmware weighs over 1.9GB and brings several new features, including the Now Bar from One UI 7 to Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatches.
If you are in South Korea or the US, you can join the One UI 8 Watch beta program through the Samsung Members app. You’ll see a banner in the app, which you must tap to register and enroll your device in the program. After that, use the Galaxy Wearable app to download the latest beta firmware. If the update does not show up immediately, try again after a few minutes.
Besides health features like Bedtime Guidance and Vascular Load, which Samsung has already detailed, One UI 8 Watch comes with personalized watch face suggestions, Now Bar, custom tiles support, etc. While not mentioned, it could also bring a superior Always-on Display implementation with media controls support.
Thanks to Wear OS 6, it should also bring full Facer support — a popular Wear OS app for watch faces back in the day.
One UI 8 Watch will debut on the Galaxy Watch 8
While the One UI 8 Watch public beta starts with the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra, Samsung will release the stable build to the public with the upcoming Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic.
A stable firmware for its existing watches will most likely only arrive in late August or early September. Before that, the company could expand the program to include its older Galaxy watches, including the Galaxy Watch 5.
The Galaxy Watch 4 lineup may not get a taste of One UI 8 Watch, as it will supposedly reach the end of its software support cycle before that.
