“To unlock the full potential of these wearables, we’re leveraging our long legacy of mobile innovations and our partnerships with trusted industry leaders who have grown with us in our open ecosystem,” said Patrick Chomet, EVP and Head of Customer Experience Office, Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. “Through these efforts, we will enrich our smartwatch experience and convenience of the Galaxy ecosystem for our consumers.”

One UI Watch together with the new unified platform will create an entirely new Galaxy Watch experience. As part of the new experience, once you install watch-compatible apps on your smartphone, they will be swiftly downloaded onto your smartwatch. If you’ve customized your clock app on your phone to show the time in different cities around the globe, this will be automatically reflected on your watch as well. And if you block calls and messages from your watch, they will now be blocked on your smartphone, too.

The unified platform will open up new features and integrations with popular third-party apps available to download from Google Play directly on your Galaxy Watch. So, whether you’re a sports and fitness fanatic who wants to get more out of apps like Adidas Running, GOLF BUDDY Smart Caddie, Strava, and Swim.com, a wellness seeker who wants to live a more balanced lifestyle with apps like Calm or Sleep Cycle, a music lover who revels in discovering new artists on Spotify and YouTube Music, or an intrepid explorer ready to roam with Google Maps—there’s something for everyone, thanks to a diverse range of partners.

“Samsung and Google have a long history of collaboration and whenever we’ve worked together, the experience for our consumers has been dramatically better for everyone,” said Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Android and Wear, Google. “That certainly holds true for this new, unified platform, which will be rolling out for the first time on Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch. In collaboration with Samsung, we’re thrilled to bring longer battery life, faster performance, and a wide range of apps, including many from Google to a whole new wearable experience.”

In addition, Samsung will bring an improved watch face design tool, making it easier than ever for designers to create new watch faces. Later this year, Android developers will be able to unleash their creativity and release fun, new designs that will be added to Samsung’s ever-growing collection of watch faces to give consumers even more options for customizing their smartwatches to suit their mood, activity and personality.

The new Galaxy Watch will be the first-ever device to feature One UI Watch and the new, unified platform, which is scheduled to be announced at Samsung’s Unpacked event later this summer. Stay tuned for the new Galaxy Watch and much more.

Your Galaxy Watch offers immense possibilities in managing health, digital detox and increasing productivity at a time when remote working is the buzzword. Here are some pro tips to extract the most out of your Galaxy Watch.

Healthy Lifestyle

Your Galaxy Watch encourages you to form healthy habits round the clock with action-based insights. Packed with powerful range of sensors, Samsung Health on your Galaxy Watch is your personal health adviser, automatically tracking and detecting 39 workouts. The ‘Daily Activity’ widget provides all health goals (calories, steps, exercise time, active time) snapshot in a single screen. You can also monitor your stress levels regularly and the in-built guided breathing exercise can help in restoring the energy levels.

Harish Bishnoi: Your Galaxy Watch encourages you to form healthy habits

To improve healthy lifestyle, Samsung Health comes with a widget, where you can log and monitor your water and caffeine intake. This is a sure shot way of preventing yourself against unnecessary snacking and keeping your body hydrated.

Also Read: Heartbeats from Himalayas and Steps in Spain – Travel and Stay Fit Millennial Style

The Galaxy Watch also prompts you to get going, when you lost track of time in the midst of back-to-back conference calls. With the sleep tracker, you can analyze your sleep quality and the automated ‘Daily Briefing’ notifications are a bonus for all users. To top it all, your Galaxy Watch now comes with the popular ‘Hand Wash’ app that prompts you to clean your hands, a key preventive attribute to stay safe.

Digital Detox

With your Galaxy Watch, you get notifications for a wide range of activities –calls, messages, reminders, news – all at the flick of your wrist, but with limited interaction to the smartphone screen. This is a big step to regulate screen time and avoid distractions, enabling you to focus on work and also spend quality time with your family. The Goodnight Mode on your Galaxy Watch prevents disturbances while you are sleeping and the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature mutes alerts and keeps screen off at scheduled times.

Higher Productivity

With the SmartThings App, you can switch on TV or the lights, control temperature, start scenes or automations with a simple command from the wrist. The Bixby Smart Assistant helps in being productive through simple voice commands, making it easy to initiate calls, send messages, create reminders, and monitor health performances.

Also Read: A Day With My Galaxy: How to Get the Best Out of It

In the stand-alone mode – and connected to LTE mobile network – you can use your Galaxy Watch to take calls and get messages even when the phone is not in connectivity range. You can leave your phone at home, but still go out for those long morning walks, listening to great music and without worrying about missed calls.

[The author of this article Harish Bishnoi, is Director, IoT & Product Analytics at Samsung Research Institute – Bangalore]

You too may have hummed your favourite movie song or counted from one to twenty when it all began. But as the days pass by, maybe you are becoming forgetful, and not washing your hands as regularly, and as well, as you should.

The World Health Organization has recommended frequent washing of hands among a slew of other measures to halt the spread of Covid-19. Hand wash is considered effective only when it lasts for full 20 seconds, according to healthcare professionals.

To make things easy, a small group of designers and developers from Samsung Research Institute-Bangalore, or SRI-B’s UX and wearable teams, worked round-the-clock over the last two weeks to come up with a solution that helps you keep healthy and safe.

Accordingly, SRI-B employees – mostly working remotely from their homes – built the ‘Hand Wash’ app – a wearable app for Galaxy Watch that prompts users to clean their hands, a key preventive attribute to stay safe.

The ‘Hand Wash’ app on Galaxy Watch helps users maintain hand hygiene by periodically reminding them about it and ensuring each wash is thorough for the duration of 20 seconds in line with WHO recommended best practices. The app comes with preset reminders which users can customize further based on their needs and schedule.

Also, each time the user initiates the wash sequence, the ‘Hand Wash’ app tracks the time and provides users with haptic feedback after 25 seconds of wash cycle. Five seconds are for turning on the tap and applying soap, while 20 seconds are for actual hand wash. The ‘Hand Wash’ app also notifies users if they miss any of scheduled pit stops to the wash basin!

The ‘Hand Wash’ app allows users to track their daily wash trends to build healthy habit over a period. The ‘Hand Wash’ app is further complimented by elegant watch face, which allows users to intuitively track their daily wash routine. Moreover, the watch face also shows the elapsed time since last wash to give users a sense of alertness about their hygiene in real time.

Galaxy Watch users can download the ‘Hand Wash’ app from the Galaxy Store.

We would love to hear your experience of using the ‘Hand Wash’ app. Your feedback will help us make the app better to help more users stay healthy and safe.

After all, when it comes to our health, prevention is always better than cure!