Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active 2 was designed with a raft of health monitoring features in mind, but it’s taken a while for some, such as the ECG sensor, to get the official go-ahead from the relevant authorities. Now, after being given the green light by the South Korean drug safety agency, Samsung is rolling out blood pressure monitoring to the device. As with the ECG sensor, though, it’ll only be available for users in South Korea.
The Galaxy Watch Active 2 still won’t work as a full-on replacement for a traditional blood pressure cuff; in fact, you need to use one to calibrate the app every four weeks. That’s really for the best, though optical-based sensors can technically only measure the change in blood pressure rather than give an accurate reading by themselves. With a traditional reading as a baseline, Samsung’s app should be more useful for tracking trends over time or between visits to the doctor.
Samsung says the Health Monitor app will also support ECG (electrocardiogram) heart monitoring from the third quarter of this year in South Korea. That’s a feature Apple introduced with the Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018, though it’s yet to offer native support for blood pressure tracking.
Samsung hasn’t announced details of plans to bring these features outside of South Korea. Any such efforts would depend on approval from local regulatory bodies.
