After many months of beta testing, Samsung is seemingly preparing the major One UI 6 Watch update for a public release on older Galaxy Watch models. The company took more time than usual to prepare this big update, but that's not really an issue per se. We can all agree it's better if Samsung releases a polished update later than a broken one early.
Nevertheless, Samsung does seem to have a problem keeping up with security patches. As our friends at GalaxyClub point out, the Galaxy Watch 4, Galaxy Watch 5, and Galaxy Watch 6 lineups haven't received a new security patch in eight months, since March.
Even the latest Galaxy Watch Ultra and Watch 7 are running a relatively outdated June 2024 security update.
According to Samsung's official security update bulletin, all Galaxy Watches running Wear OS — meaning Galaxy Watch 4 and newer — are supposed to receive quarterly security updates.
Needless to say, Samsung is now very far enough from that target – far enough to warrant a bit of a call-out.
On the one hand, this delay could mean that Galaxy Watches don't really need new security fixes at the moment. And that should give us peace of mind.
But on the other hand, the lack of security patches does not confirm that security issues don't exist. They may or may not. At the end of the day, Samsung does have an official schedule to keep up with, which is now failing to do so in a grand fashion.
To play the devil's advocate, it's not like Samsung hasn't been paying any attention to its Galaxy Watches. Perhaps the company is too busy polishing the big One UI 6 Watch update for a public release, and things will go back to normal soon. We can only hope.
Then again, since the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra already run One UI 6 Watch, it makes sense that at least they should be able to keep up with the official security patch quarterly release schedule. So far, they've failed to do so. We'll keep you posted once we find out more.
