Tizen 4 arriving on Samsung’s Gear S3 and Gear Sport smartwatches

By Mark Jansen January 22, 2019

Samsung Gear S3 Frontier review — Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Samsung’s smartwatches have been a great alternative if, in the last few years, you’ve been searching for a great smartwatch that isn’t an Apple Watch. The Gear S3 may now be one of the older iterations of Samsung’s range of wearables, but it’s no less great at what it does. Samsung isn’t giving up on the Gear S3 range either, as it’s now pushing Tizen 4 out to the Gear S3 Classic, Gear S3 Frontier, and the Gear Sport.

The update contains various improvements to existing features, as well as some new quality-of-life improvements. Mentioned in the official update notes are improvements to Samsung Health to support more indoor exercises and back-to-back workouts, as well as information on sleep stages in the Samsung Health Widget. Two new modes have been added — Theatre and Sleep — ensuring you won’t be disturbed at specific times or places. Users can now save draft messages in the Gear S3’s Messages app, and the replaying of MMS messages has also been improved.

Samsung has also improved some navigation in the watch, including tweaks to the Quick Panel and Settings that make it easier to quickly access features and settings. The Music app has also been improved, and owners can now choose a different playing source from the watch itself, rather than having to swap to their phone.

The XDA Developers’ community has noticed a few other changes not noted in the official change notes, including new management options for app permissions, a new way to take screenshots, and the ability to scroll through older messages in a bubble-style view like most smartphones. Also, the Quick Settings menu has apparently been tweaked to make it feel smoother when pulled down.

The update is 299MB in size, and it’s likely rolling out to different regions in a staggered manner. If you want to manually check for the update, then you can check for it on your Galaxy Wearable app. To do this, open that app, head to Settings, then tap About Gear > Update Gear software > Download updates manually. If the update is available, tap Install to download and run it. If it’s not there, wait a day and try again.

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Mark Jansen is an avid follower of everything that beeps, bloops, or makes pretty lights. He has a degree in Ancient &…

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