Galaxy Watch 4 will get its Wear OS 3.5 update sometime in the next three months, Samsung says

Ben Schoon | Jul 12 2022 - 7:00 am PT

The Galaxy Watch 4 series has been beta testing its next “major” update for a few weeks now, and this week, Samsung is confirming when One UI 4.5 will be available to everyone.

Officially announced today, One UI 4.5, which is built on top of Wear OS 3.5, will be released to the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic in “Q3 2022” according to Samsung. That means the update could arrive anytime before the end of September.

While Samsung isn’t really hinting at a specific time, August feels like an obvious answer. The Galaxy Watch 5 series is expected in mid-August and will most likely run this update from launch.

It stands to reason that the Galaxy Watch 4 will see that update in the same time period.

What’s new in One UI 4.5 for the Galaxy Watch 4 series?

We’ve seen all of the new features thanks to the ongoing beta, but Samsung points to four new areas of improvement in particular.

Firstly, the keyboard now supports a full QWERTY layout with gesture typing.

Previously, Samsung’s keyboard was limited solely to T9 input alongside voice dictation and handwriting. Only by installing Gboard could Watch 4 owners get a QWERTY layout before now.

Samsung also notes support for Dual-SIM cellular connections.

There’s also a new trick for watch faces that includes the ability to “copy your favorite watch faces and then swapping available colors and combinations to create the look you want.” There’s also a new “favorites” section for organizing watch faces.

Rounding out the four main points, Samsung also notes several accessibility improvements found within One UI 4.5. The company explains:

Users who have a difficult time distinguishing colors will be able to adjust the display to their preferred hue and increase contrast to make fonts easier to read. Other features for visual assistance include reduced transparency and blur effects as well as removal of animations. In addition, auditory assistance for those difficult of hearing allows users to balance the sound from the left and right audio output for their connected Bluetooth headset.
Those who need added support for touch inputs can extend the duration for screen tap interaction with Tap duration and can disable repeated touch inputs with Ignore repeated touches for better control.

Beyond those points, beta updates revealed a few other minor changes to the OS, as we previously detailed.

As mentioned, Samsung hasn’t set a firm release date for One UI 4.5, but it’s reasonable to expect it sometime in August. The update is still in beta testing, but Samsung appears to have closed invites to the program.