Samsung has finally received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an irregular heart rhythm notification feature that will be available on its upcoming Galaxy Watch 6. This feature will work alongside the company’s FDA-cleared EKG feature which is a comparatively new feature.
This new feature is comparable to Fitbit’s passive AFib monitoring feature which was introduced last year. Unlike EKG measurements, the irregular heart rhythm notifications will monitor for irregular heart rate rhythms in the background automatically without requiring any action from the user which is amazing. Users will only receive an alert once a certain number of consecutive measurements are found to be irregular, after which they will be prompted to take an EKG immediately.
The new feature will be a part of the One UI 5 Watch update, which Samsung announced recently. It will be introduced first on the upcoming Galaxy Watch devices later this year, and later it will also come to previous editions, presumably the Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 lineups. Samsung plans to launch a One UI 5 Watch beta later this month for existing Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 users, but it is unclear if this feature will be included in the beta version.
Samsung’s new irregular heart rhythm notification feature is a good addition to the already available features in the smartwatch. It will definitely make our life easier and better and turn these smart watches into comprehensive health tools.
With the Pixel Watch’s recent success, which is now ranked second in the market, and the upcoming release of the Pixel Fold, Samsung is also working on updates to compete. Samsung should also introduce more new features to the watches which will further enhance the capabilities of these smart watches and make these watches better in the long run.