Samsung’s fancy new Galaxy Watch 4 works best when paired with Galaxy smartphones

• Andrew
• 3 years ago

A lot of hubbub is being made about the all-new BioActive sensor that is built into the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic. This is for good reason though, as this sensor combined with the others, allow for you to track all kinds of metrics, including the following:

• Blood pressure
• ECG
• Blood oxygen level (SpO2)
• VO2 Max
• Irregular heartbeats
• Body composition
• Sleep tracking
• Skeletal muscle
• Basal metabolic rate
• Body water percentage
• Body fat percentage

And what’s even more insane is that Samsung’s new smartwatches can do all of this, capturing 2,400 data points, in just about 15 seconds. It’s absolutely incredible. But there’s a big ole’ catch that was found after Galaxy Unpacked came to a conclusion — you have to use a Samsung Galaxy phone in order to take advantage.

This was confirmed by Android Central after receiving confirmation from Samsung directly. The company claims that the reason for this limitation to needing to use Galaxy phones is because of the Samsung Health Monitor app. Although it’s available for download from the Play Store, Samsung can only best integrate and provide the ideal experience when using a Galaxy smartphone paired with the Galaxy Watch.

Samsung also confirmed that neither the Galaxy Watch 4 nor the Watch 4 Active will work with iOS devices. A little known fact was that you could actually pair your Galaxy Watch Active 2 or Watch 3 to an iPhone if you just enjoyed using Samsung’s smartwatches instead. The same rings true for Wear OS smartwatches released before Wear OS 3, such as the TicWatch E3 and TicWatch Pro 3. What remains to be seen is whether Wear OS 3 will ditch iOS support altogether, or if this is just limited to the new Galaxy Watch 4 series.