Samsung’s One UI Watch4.5 Makes the Watch4 More Usable
July 15, 2022Samsung is readying itself for the release of One UI Watch4.5, which should bring a slew of welcome improvements to Wear OS 3.5 (Wear OS Powered by Samsung). The most important of the lot has to be the addition of a full-typing experience on the Galaxy Watch4.
The company says it’s adding a new full QWERTY keyboard with Swipe functionality that will work along with handwriting and voice dictation. Users can switch between methods seamlessly and at any time.
Expect more watch face customizability with the new interface. Users will be able to have their favorite watch faces in various styles. This can be done by adding it to their favorite list multiple times and customizing each instance with various colors and complications.
The favorites list also allows quick access to said watch faces without having to go through the entire library. That said, there’s no word on whether new watch faces will be added as well. This was the case with the previous “major” release of Samsung’s Watch One UI.
Dual-SIM support is also supported. Users who select a preferred SIM on their Galaxy smartphone will see that functionality transferred to their Watch as well. But, if they’ve selected “ask always”, then the Galaxy Watch will ask them to choose which SIM they’d like to use every time.
Some useful accessibility options have been added as well, which allow users who have a difficult time distinguishing colors to set their preferred hue and increase contrast. There’s also reduced transparency and blur effects as well as removal of animations. Users who have difficulty hearing can balance the sound from the left and right audio output for their Bluetooth earbuds.
There’s also the ability to extend duration for screen tap duration with Tap duration. Repeated touch inputs can be disabled with Ignore repeated touches. You can also adjust how long temporary functions like volume and notifications stay on screen. The Home button can also be used to toggle the most common feature. All said accessibility options are arranged in a single place.
Samsung says that we can expect One UI Watch 4.5 to start rolling out to Galaxy Watch users in the coming months. And in case you didn’t know, it will be made available to users of the Galaxy Watch4, Watch4 Classic and upcoming Galaxy Watch5 series.
