Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 compatibility with Polar H10 heart rate sensor?

[RifleMan_Cz]

Hi,

I bought Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. I would like to use my HRM (Heart rate monitor) Polar H10+ as the watch HRM sensor is not always precise, especially during high intensitive training or swimming.

I can pair the Polar with Samsung Health application. When I start the activity thru the mobile phone, it recognizes the Polar as HRM and everything is OK. But I don't want to always start the activity via mobile phone and on top of that, the activity is not visible on watch (live).

When I start the activity via Watch, HRM is being used only by watches. When I go to the Bluetooth (on smart watches), I cannot find the HRM Polar to connect on.

I know there was some discussion couple of years ago, so I thought, Samsung already fixed this issue. There are some applications/watch faces, that allow you to connect to chest HRM w/o any issues, so how can I do that just using Samsung Watch w/o any of the apps? Thank you for your help!

[Gc10]

Company should stick to what they do best. Like you said there's nothing wrong with having more compatibility with other companies that do it better.

[Ostar]

If I am not mistaken you can connect external sensors with your watch with Google Fit. I have seen it in the app settings on the watch, just haven't tried it yet, but I will shortly. I am quite dissatisfied with the internal heart rate sensor but I like the Samsung Health app features.

[Ostar]

So... I just tried it immediately after I posted the message and... it works. It connected to my  Wahoo Tickr A2FC on the first try! And it registers the Tickr's measurements during the activity. So next official run I'll use  Google Fit. It makes me pretty confident that other sensors will be supported too.

[hugo122019]

Hi. Did it work? Could you use google fit while running and Wahoo Tickr A2FC? Did the other sensors worked well too? Thanks

[Sargoneees]

Hello! Glad to know it worked with Google fit. So how did it tie in with activities? Like when you started your "run" activity, did it automatically detect the HR from the polar? Did you have to start the activity through the Google fit app on the watch or the normal run activity? Did it still register all of the metrics it would normally do?

[Sargoneees]

I saw you never got a reply. Did you end up trying it yourself by any chance?

[Waldläufer68]

After months of use, I have to follow up on this - tl;dr I changed my mind.

While the Watch4 burns through its battery rapidly out in the forest, I found this is nothing to do with workout tracking. It's the absence of the paired phone, combined with poor LTE signal  - but battery life is still plenty good enough for a two- or three-hour run with everything on default settings, bluetooth earpiece connected, auto-lap every kilometer, etc.

This Saturday, I went to try the other end of the scale, full flight mode, energy save mode, no bluetooth, vibration and audio off, no audio cues, manual lap (every 5 km). Why? I participated in a 74 km cross-country trail run, and wanted to see how long the Watch4 would last when acting purely as a sports tracker.

It actually lasted all the way through, in running mode with GPS and all sensors enabled but all radios off and energy save mode engaged. Total running time 9 hours 19 minutes, and it still had 27% of battery left on the finish line.

This is actually very impressive, up there with the best of pure sports watches.

So ... never mind the battery saving. The other aspect, being able to wear the watch on top of long sleeve clothes, I found that I don't actually need that either. Auto lap plus audio guide through bluetooth earpiece gets that job done nicely too.

The only remaining complaint I have is about the manual lap feature - double tap the active display to end a lap. Getting the double tap to register pretty much requires me to stand still, no way of getting a "correct" double tap done while running. But that shall be a thread of its own.

Keep exercising everyone, stay healthy!
Peter

[Ali-SY]

It's really disappointing that in 2022 and after all of those versions of smartwatches, Samsung has no option to connect the external heart monitors to the smartwatch.

[tanagno]

Yes it is a shame. Hope they will do it in the future..