Galaxy Watch 7, Watch 8 and Watch Ultra get One UI 9 Watch beta as older models take security patches

Samsung has started public beta tests of One UI 9 Watch on four older smartwatches. The Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic beta opened on 26 August, and the Galaxy Watch 7 and the first Galaxy Watch Ultra joined it this week, with the first builds reaching Korean watches on 3 and 4 September. A second beta for the Watch 8 series followed today.

Both programmes run only in South Korea and the United States. Owners there enrol through the Samsung Members app, then pull the update from the Galaxy Wearable app. Kenyan watch owners cannot join, and Samsung has not said whether the beta will expand to more markets.

What One UI 9 Watch is

One UI 9 Watch is Samsung’s version of Wear OS 7, the smartwatch operating system Google builds. It launched on the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, which Samsung announced at Unpacked in London on 22 July and put on sale on 7 August. We covered those watches alongside the Fold8 and Flip8 on launch day.

The software has a refreshed interface with a smaller default font and brighter colours, and a redesigned Samsung Health app built around five areas: activity, mindfulness, nutrition, sleep and vitals. The new health tools are Vitals, which tracks heart rate, breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen overnight to build a personal baseline, a Heart Health Score, a Fitness Index, and Daily Cardio Load, which tells you how much recovery a hard workout needs. Runners can load GPX route files and use Trackback to retrace a route.

Reports on the Watch 7 beta say it carries Cardio Load, Sleep Vitals, Heart Health, Trackback, redesigned notifications and reworked tiles. Two features stay exclusive. Samsung’s newsroom says Raise to Talk for Gemini, where you lift the watch to your mouth and speak without a wake word, is “currently available on Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Galaxy Watch9”. Trail Run, with live elevation data, is exclusive to the Watch Ultra 2.

The beta builds

The Watch 8 beta is about 2GB and carries the August 2026 security patch. The Watch 7 and Watch Ultra beta is about 1.9GB and already includes the September 2026 patch.

The second Watch 8 beta is a bug-fix release. Samsung’s changelog lists stabilisation code, and fixes for the Health app, watch faces and the time shown on the always-on display.

Samsung has not published a list of watches due for the stable update or a date. SamMobile reports the company expects compatible watches to get it before the end of 2026, and its expected list runs from the Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro through the Watch 6, Watch FE, Watch 7, Watch Ultra and Watch 8. The Galaxy Watch 4 is not on it.

Security patches for the rest

Older watches are getting the August 2026 security patch, which Samsung says fixes 56 issues. The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic got it first in Korea, and the Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro followed.

The Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 received their first update at the end of August, a roughly 200MB security-only build on Verizon. That firmware confirmed the two new watches support Seamless Updates, the Android mechanism that installs new software in the background and applies it on the next reboot. Older Galaxy Watches lack the partition layout it needs. The new pair also get five OS upgrades and five years of security patches, one more upgrade than the Watch 8 we reviewed in January was promised.

For a Kenyan Galaxy Watch owner, there is nothing to install yet. The stable One UI 9 Watch update is the one to wait for, and it will appear under Watch settings, then Watch software update, in the Galaxy Wearable app.