Have Samsung made a terrible mistake with their new watches?

[The_Interloper]

The reviews are BRUTAL. Everywhere I look here in the UK - Amazon. Very, Samsung.com etc - it’s riddled with 1-star reviews across all the lines (40mm/44mm/Classic).

There seem to be three common issues:

1. Battery life is atrocious. Former Tizen watch users are livid they have gone from 2-3 days to less than 1.
2. Missing functionality on non-Samsung phones.
3. A dissatisfaction with WearOS in general. Watch face purchases on the Galaxy Store, for example, don’t carry across to the new OS.

Seriously, this looks to be one of the worst product launches I’ve seen in an awfully long time. Samsung has to do something to stop the bleeding here or they have a major embarrassment on their hands.

 

[three]

I'm using a Galaxy Watch 4 (40mm) with my Z Flip3. I can understand a good number of the complaints but as I've been using it, I guess I'm happy with it? ?‍♂️ I haven't really ran into (and / or looked heavily) for bugs and issues. I've moved over from the 12 mini + Apple Watch S5 and although it's not as fluid or smooth of an experience as that combination, once again, I'm not hating the Galaxy Watch 4. Regarding battery life, I'm ending a day with 50 - 60% battery left. I'm not babying the battery and I'm not cautious with it. I have the AOD and raise to wake on, as well as all of the fitness things, too. Either way. IDK.

My last Samsung Watch was the S3 Frontier with Tizen and back then Tizen was slow, laggy, and the fitness tracking and overall health experience was very lacking. wearOS is miles better than that. Although the S3 Frontier is several years old at this point.

 

[Klyster]

My battery life is stellar, home from work with 75%.
I have the 46mm classic.
My s3 frontier still gets a days battery life after 5 years.

I haven't seen any terrible reviews but haven't really been looking for them most reviews I've seen have been positive.
Care to post a few?

 

[Sincci]

Got the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic 46mm (bt only) and so far it's been great at least for me. Some people with the LTE model seem to have overheat issues, but after using this thing for the past 3 weeks, I have never seen any slowdowns and the batterylife is around 48 hours with most features including AOD and proper sleep tracking on. The wireless charger pad that Samsung offered as a preorder bonus charges it pretty quickly too. Then again, perhaps my experience is ok since I'm using it with a Samsung phone too. The only thing I don't really like about it is the wrist band, but luckily that one can be changed quite easily too.

 

[The_Interloper]

I haven't seen any terrible reviews but haven't really been looking for them most reviews I've seen have been positive.
Care to post a few?

Just take a look at the averages on Samsung's own site. Here's the first page of reviews on Very.

I wonder if an awful lot of these are coming from Tizen Watch 3/Active 2 users. I found this one particularly damning:

★1 out of 5 stars.
lego84
· 14 days ago

let down​

the watch is the reason why i am cancelling everything down and moving back to apple. the battery life is terrible. doesnt even last a full day. i would never recommend this device. i love the phone i got with it flip 3 but its not worth having if i have to put up with this watch. do not buy

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

My average is about two days. AOD always on, Auto Brightness enable, raise to wake disabled. I get tons of notifications daily.

 

[Klyster]

Just take a look at the averages on Samsung's own site. Here's the first page of reviews on Very.

I wonder if an awful lot of these are coming from Tizen Watch 3/Active 2 users. I found this one particularly damning:

★1 out of 5 stars.
lego84
· 14 days ago

let down​

the watch is the reason why i am cancelling everything down and moving back to apple. the battery life is terrible. doesnt even last a full day. i would never recommend this device. i love the phone i got with it flip 3 but its not worth having if i have to put up with this watch. do not buy

Your first link doesn't work for me, the 2nd link has 12 reviews.

Samsung Galaxy Watch (46mm) | SM-R800 | NZ

Galaxy Watch is a smartwatch in silver colour with 46mm size. It has 22mm straps made of silicone material. With a lengthy battery life, you can manage many functions such as health monitoring or schedule management.

www.samsung.com

There's a few on here that aren't happy but most are.

Personally I'm happy with mine.

What's the battery life like on the Apple watch? I have no idea.

 

[Fried_Gold]

Love my 40mm watch4, usually end the day on 50% so can get 2 days out of it.

 

[The_Interloper]

There's a few on here that aren't happy but most are.

Personally I'm happy with mine.

What's the battery life like on the Apple watch? I have no idea.

The Apple Watch battery life is atrocious, less than a day typically.

I had an opportunity to play with a Galaxy Watch 4 last week and really liked it which is partly why I'm so shocked at the apparent level of dissatisfaction. I'm wondering if it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the slightly lower battery life from former Tizen owners. There's a similar mixed bag at John Lewis. The overall review profile across all retailers seems to average out as pretty mediocre.

Trust me, I really want this watch to succeed as I think Samsung have made a good looking device that finally elevates WearOS to where it should be. But here is the first page of reviews on Very, ordered from most recent – one 5-star, three 2-star and three 1-star. It looks terrible and certainly wouldn't encourage most people to buy one.

 

[kkh786]

The reviews are BRUTAL. Everywhere I look here in the UK - Amazon. Very, Samsung.com etc - it’s riddled with 1-star reviews across all the lines (40mm/44mm/Classic).

There seem to be three common issues:

1. Battery life is atrocious. Former Tizen watch users are livid they have gone from 2-3 days to less than 1.
2. Missing functionality on non-Samsung phones.
3. A dissatisfaction with WearOS in general. Watch face purchases on the Galaxy Store, for example, don’t carry across to the new OS.

Seriously, this looks to be one of the worst product launches I’ve seen in an awfully long time. Samsung has to do something to stop the bleeding here or they have a major embarrassment on their hands.

I am pretty sure majority of the negative reviews are due to people not letting the Watch4 series learn behaviour and settle down (takes about 2-3 days) before deciding the battery life is poor. This was the same with the S21 range of smartphones.

I have had and used both the regular and classic version of the watch4 (don't ask why.. going back to a classic due to aesthetics) and after those initial 2-3 days of settling the battery life was easily 1-2 days if not going on to day 3 on the rare occasion.

Also note, I have EVERYTHING on all my smartwatches.. so no holding back on usage of features!

 

[5105973]

I wonder if there’s a bad batch. The Android Central reviewer has to return his. He had all sorts of issues but the one that stood out to me is his watch would overheat and shut off and lost his run data.

Regarding the question about the Apple Watch battery: On mine which is the smaller model, using it just as a watch with the modular face and AOD, it does last from about 7 am until midnight.

But if I want to actually use the sensors for tracking blood pressure and blood oxygen and the ekg then it drains fast. And setting it to track a workout drains it. So I would need to throw it on the charger mid-day. My watch is almost a year old now.

What I absolutely can not do without is the navigation prompts for driving. Traffic is crazy around here once you get past the farms and head anywhere there’s subdivisions. All that housing traffic funnels into roads built for farmland and we get blockages and I’m always having to input a new route that involves hairpin turns in deep woods that can put me suddenly out onto a major highway. It’s crazy. So I like a watch that warns me about things ahead. Apple sent their vans over and mapped all this crazy Deliverance style backroads crap I drive through. This feature puts moderate strain on the battery, but not as bad as the sensor stuff does.

 

[hallux]

Edit: darn work getting in the way! I see @GrumpyMom commented about this review, here's the link..

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 isn't good enough — why I'm returning it after 2 weeks

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series was announced and, for the most part, received much fanfare. I was among those cheering it on, but since the dust has settled and I spent the last two ...

www.androidcentral.com

 

[aggie99]

Really enjoying mine (46mm Classic). I've had all the Galaxy watches and this one is easily my favorite. Sadly it still falls short of the Apple Watch in a few ways but I just can't force myself to use the iPhone for the Apple Watch anymore. I still have my 12PM but it sits in a drawer with the Z Fold3 and S21 Ultra as my main use devices. Once Google Assistant is available on it I won't have much, if anything, to complain about.

 

[lyunmac]

Love my Watch 4 classic. I traded in my GW3 for it and love the silver watch. Sure battery could be a bit better but I still use it the same way I did with my GW3. I like the extra apps and screen looks bright and colorful. The OG GW had the best battery of all.

 

[The_Interloper]

The OG GW had the best battery of all.

Yeah, I still have one. Still a good-looking watch, a little heavy though.

 

[Klyster]

The Apple Watch battery life is atrocious, less than a day typically.

I had an opportunity to play with a Galaxy Watch 4 last week and really liked it which is partly why I'm so shocked at the apparent level of dissatisfaction. I'm wondering if it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the slightly lower battery life from former Tizen owners. There's a similar mixed bag at John Lewis. The overall review profile across all retailers seems to average out as pretty mediocre.

Trust me, I really want this watch to succeed as I think Samsung have made a good looking device that finally elevates WearOS to where it should be. But here is the first page of reviews on Very, ordered from most recent – one 5-star, three 2-star and three 1-star. It looks terrible and certainly wouldn't encourage most people to buy one.

View attachment 1831965

Well that's a bummer.

I'm here at work at nearly 1pm and I've got 89% left so no complaints from me but I get that my experience is purely anecdotal.

I remember a bug on my frontier that would drain both my phone and watch quickly, I didn't use my watch for a couple of weeks, then it was sorted with an update.
Hopefully this could happen in this scenario, but if people have returned it, it's kinda too late.

Here's a day with mine, taken just before 9pm, pretty decent really.

 

[The Game 161]

Android central review wasn’t good but people on twitter who have one seem pretty happy with theirs

 

[koigirl]

The best thing about the classic Galaxy watch line IMO is the durability factor. They are pretty much indestructible- my husband is very active and hard on his watch in business and in leisure and has never destroyed a Samsung watch (Gear, S3 and now Galaxy 4 Classic. I have the Apple stainless Watch 6 and the screen has minor scratches and the stainless surround is a mess. I haven’t broken it but I’m way more careful than he would be or was with his Apple Watch and he had several broken screens before he made the switch to Samsung phone/watch.

 

[koigirl]

The best thing about the classic Galaxy watch line IMO is the durability factor. They are pretty much indestructible- my husband is very active and hard on his watch in business and in leisure and has never destroyed a Samsung watch (Gear, S3 and now Galaxy 4 Classic. I have the Apple stainless Watch 6 and the screen has minor scratches and the stainless surround is a mess. I haven’t broken it but I’m way more careful than he would be or was with his Apple Watch and he had several broken screens before he made the switch to Samsung phone/watch. Plus the classic line looks more like a real watch.

 

[Awesomesince86]

Those reviews seem suspicious to me. My battery is usually around 60% at the end of the day. Maybe it's an issue with non Samsung devices? I am using mine with a S21 Ultra so I can't comment there. Maybe the problem is with the plugins on non Samsung devices draining battery.

The EKG and blood pressure stuff is pretty minor to me. If that's the reason you are buying these watches, you've missed the point. Those things aren't accurate anyway. At least not enough to be helpful from a medical standpoint.

Personally, I think the new galaxy watches are much better than the previous iterations. Just needs Google assistant and Google Pay integration and it'll be great.

 

[ian87w]

The reviews are BRUTAL. Everywhere I look here in the UK - Amazon. Very, Samsung.com etc - it’s riddled with 1-star reviews across all the lines (40mm/44mm/Classic).

There seem to be three common issues:

1. Battery life is atrocious. Former Tizen watch users are livid they have gone from 2-3 days to less than 1.
2. Missing functionality on non-Samsung phones.
3. A dissatisfaction with WearOS in general. Watch face purchases on the Galaxy Store, for example, don’t carry across to the new OS.

Seriously, this looks to be one of the worst product launches I’ve seen in an awfully long time. Samsung has to do something to stop the bleeding here or they have a major embarrassment on their hands.

Remember, this is now a "version 1" again. It's a reboot of both WearOS and Galaxy Watch. At the very least, now WearOS has a good more convincing start with Samsung's help.

Think of it as the original Apple Watch. It will be rough. But then the next version will be better.

 

[Zwhaler]

Watch4 40mm had better battery life than Watch3. Software was much better too. I returned it for other reasons.

 

[spinedoc77]

The reviews are BRUTAL. Everywhere I look here in the UK - Amazon. Very, Samsung.com etc - it’s riddled with 1-star reviews across all the lines (40mm/44mm/Classic).

There seem to be three common issues:

1. Battery life is atrocious. Former Tizen watch users are livid they have gone from 2-3 days to less than 1.
2. Missing functionality on non-Samsung phones.
3. A dissatisfaction with WearOS in general. Watch face purchases on the Galaxy Store, for example, don’t carry across to the new OS.

Seriously, this looks to be one of the worst product launches I’ve seen in an awfully long time. Samsung has to do something to stop the bleeding here or they have a major embarrassment on their hands.

Interesting. I always thought the battery life on my GW3 was fairly poor to begin with. It also bummed me out to see no more iPhone support for the GW4, even though that was a very niche market.