Galaxy Watch 4 heart rate not tracking properly

[rkam]

Hi all, am hoping someone could help as Sumsung customer support aren't interested in helping me. My Galaxy watch 4 classic has the HR measurement turned on to continuous monitoring but it is not updating continuously. Sometimes it just stops measuring and gets stuck at same HR value (even if I'm not exercising). Tried a updates, factory resets and sent it off 3 times to the service centre but still not fixed. Is there anything I need to do to fix the issue ?

[Andrew551]

Mine was working fine until the November software update. Now during work outs (cycling mostly) and idling the heart rate gets stuck at the same value. Switching between continous and 10 minutes and back again fixes it for a while and then it stops again. 

Nov update mentions they 'improved' the heart rate monitoring algorithm which appears to have broken something. As other have said they probably tried to improve the atrocious battery level and stuffed the heart rate monitoring capability.  I've factory reset without resolution. Given changing between modes makes it works proves its a software issue with continuous monitoring.

Please everyone with the same issues post it here so eventually samsung get the message.

Is there a github or something where we can post bugs and suggested software improvements as the 'support' process sucks ?

[Members_Si3rX20]

Same problem here. New Watch4 classic in Jan. Changing between continuous and 10 mins works for a couple of days 

[Andrew551]

After doing a full factory reset on the watch mine appears better. Time will tell whether it stays working.

[dwillsh]

The HR on mine doesn't work; it keeps resetting.  I hate the watch and plan to return it as it is just not fit for purpose

[Camo989]

Hi. I just picked up my galaxy watch 4 over a week ago. Was having problems with the HR monitor not working periodically, even when I attempted to manually initiate a reading. I was also having problems with notifications not coming through. I took the watch to samsung and was told that the sensor has trouble picking me up because I have tattoos on my wrist, and that this is a new issue they had just come across with the watch. Would be interesting to hear if anyone here having issues has tattoos where the sensor contacts the skin or if anyone's heard the same issue. Seems like a major flaw and basically renders the watch useless if you are someone who has tattoos. I switched from apple after being told it would be a much better experience by people  

[Benji96]

All of the sensors that exist in any wrist-worn wearable works with LEDs, and tattoo ink blocks those out, so there's unfortunately nothing that you can really do. I have read a tattooed user's post that mentioned something about certain things that you could adhere to your watch's underside, but if it's a dark, large tattoo, there's a high likelihood that the heart rate monitoring won't ever work with any watch. The Apple Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 are basically the watches with the best sensors, next to some of the Garmin models. If it won't work with the Apple Watch, it is almost guaranteed to not work with any watch. In that case, you might be interested in one of those chest belts because those measure the electrical activity (at least to my knowledge), are more precise (even though the precision of modern smartwatches with sensors as large as the current Apple Watch and the Galaxy Watch4 are surprisingly precise for a wrist-worn device) and have no issues with tattoos.

[Lasonta]

I recently noticed my sensor seems not to be working during workouts but the heart rate is logged just fine every ten mins when I'm not exercising. Can't say for sure when this started but I've noticed it about 2wks or so now. 

[RimantasV]

Sadly the basic function - heart rate is not working reliably on Watch 4.  I can observe two modes. One is let call "precise" measurement. It takes after initiation about 5 secs and seems works OK. But there is also another mode - short time (about 1 s) measurement, that shows higher rates over 130 beats/s long time after actual heart beet rate is exactly 2 times lower. Actually Im really surprised by  the faulty implementation of the well known basic measurement.

[RimantasV]

After several GW4 updates continuous heart rate still shows 2 x real values. 

[Benji96]

I agree. They keep pushing updates that don't just fix the issues (stopping the "continuous" measurement when resting, the watch very rarely picking up the (even imprecise) heart rate in general outside of training mode), but they somehow manage to make it worse with every update. They should really test their updates for functionality, because this is just awful. The watch got released about eight months ago and they've just recently managed to provide the long-promised Google Assistant, which is apparently buggy as well (disconnecting from the phone (which means: disappearing from the Galaxy Wearable app) and even requiring a factory reset to get it to re-connect when the Google Assistant has been set up), while neglecting the sensor's functionality and either not improving it or even making it worse.

The bug with the always-on-display being dimmed to the lowest possible setting that got fixed with the current update, but which simultaneously wrecked the continuous heart rate measurement again also re-appeared for me after disabling the Google Assistant, so yay! I was really hoping that the beta testing for the Galaxy Watch4 would also be available outside of the US and South Korea to see if that fixes it and for being able to give input on the problem, but of course it's still not available in Europe.