Andy Walker / Android Authority

I’ve used Garmin Connect, Fitbit, Google Health, and Xiaomi’s various health tracking apps in the past, but I’ve always felt most at home with Samsung Health. The base of operations for the company’s Galaxy Watch and fitness tracker bouquet has seen few massive UI changes over the years, but this week, the company rolled out a sparkly new app ahead of the Galaxy Watch 9 debut and One UI 9 rollout. And boy, is it different.

Although my initial snapshot impression was one filled with disgust and disappointment, after using the app for several hours, I can confirm that my feelings are more complicated than that. There’s good and bad here, and I’ve experienced both.

Here are some of the biggest changes I’ve noticed, including those hits and misses.

Did a Crayola box puke on my phone?

Andy Walker / Android Authority

I’m usually a sucker for a splash of color in my Android apps. There’s nothing more pleasing to my eye than high contrasts and bright hues. There is a limit, though, and Samsung Health’s redesign has stretched it too far.

The new UI makes prolific use of color, from the garish ombre background and tooth-achingly bright widget cards to the graphics and graphs displayed within them. It’s so far removed from the previous utilitarian version that my eyes have grown used to.

While I don’t explicitly hate this colorful revision, I do have an issue with its incoherence.

I'm usually a sucker for a splash of color in my Android apps, but Samsung Health takes it too far.

Back in the Galaxy S8 days, the Samsung Health app used a single color that corresponded with a specific metric — green for activity and blue for sleep, for instance. The colors used in this redesign have no correlation to the data they represent. Purples are used for calories and sleep scores, blues for workouts and body composition, while stress and food use orange as their default shades. These colors and the relationships between these metrics are incongruent.

This is color for color’s sake. And again, while I have no gripe with colorful apps, apps that present pertinent data to the user should ensure their form complements their function.

I’m loving the top shortcuts bar and new dashboard

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Not all aesthetic changes are negative, though. Samsung Health’s latest version introduces a top shortcut bar that lets me jump between the core aspects of health and wellbeing: Activity, Sleep, Vitals, Mindfulness, and Nutrition.

A sixth option at the top of the list takes me back to the dashboard — the section of the Health app that I can twist as I see fit. Scooting health widgets around the dashboard, expanding and shrinking them, is a UI feature that’s reminiscent of smartly designed weather apps, and it makes total sense in a health app with similarly numerous metrics.

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Back to the shortcuts bar. These silos keep all relevant features and information in their respective sections, reducing the time spent hunting for each metric across the entire app. I don’t have to second-guess if I pinned the Body composition widget to my dashboard; I can just portal to Nutrition directly to find it. I’ll find Running Coach in Activity, and heart rate in Vitals. It just makes sense.

Finding this ever-growing list of health indicators was a problem with the previous UI, and it’s good to see Samsung address it. Granted, a search facility would make this experience even better, but I won’t fault this clear improvement.

So close to graph perfection…

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Graphs are essential for presenting the information collected by a smartwatch’s various health sensors. Samsung Health’s redesign focuses on improving this important visual aid, but the changes made to graphs are perhaps the most hit-or-miss in the app.

Some graphs can now be pinched or expanded to narrow or broaden the X axis, but this only applies to a handful of graphs, not every single one. The Sleep graph, for instance, displays various tiny lines charting when I’m restless throughout the night. This was a fixture in previous versions of the app, too, but I’d quite like to zoom in on specific hours to investigate these sections, perhaps tying them back to the noises I heard throughout the night. However, this specific graph doesn’t support pinching.

What’s particularly confusing is that the same limitation applies to sleeping heart rate and sleeping blood oxygen, at least via the Sleep widget. However, the heart rate graph and blood oxygen graphs while awake do support pinching. Again, why the incongruency? Why doesn’t every graph support pinching?

…but oh so far!

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Samsung Health still lacks a feature I desperately want: a comprehensive graph page that supports the stacking of multiple metrics. This would allow me to better understand how data changes over time, across indicators, and across contexts throughout the day or night.

Samsung does seemingly believe this is a good idea in part. Most indicators have a Compare data option at the bottom of their pages. It’s easy to miss, but tapping this option lets me add one more metric to the view. This is useful, sure, but remains limited.

I can’t compare total steps with sleep time, or exercise and body composition’s skeletal muscle indicator. This would allow me to see whether I sleep soundly after long afternoon walks or whether my current exercise regimen is building muscle, even if my overall weight is increasing. It would better highlight the relationship between various health indicators.

Unfortunately, only data points within specific metrics can be compared. Sleep time against sleep score, for instance.

Nice new features we’ve got here — pity you don’t have our latest device

Andy Walker / Android Authority

A core reason for Samsung Health’s upgrade is to make way for its new health features in One UI 9, most of which are compatible with the upcoming selection of wearables. Naturally, as a Galaxy Watch 4 user, a plethora of these features and those released with the Galaxy Watch 7 don’t support my watch. However, Samsung ensures that I’m well aware of this by including all of these unsupported feature widgets on the dashboard by default.

Ideally, the app should cater to my device’s capabilities and hide features that are not supported by my watch. Instead, Hearing, Fitness Index, Daily cardio load, Heart Health, Vitals, and Vascular load are all present at Samsung Health’s initial setup, and none of them work with my Galaxy Watch 4. I either accept the waste of space, or I’m tasked with manually hiding these from the dashboard instead. What’s worse, these widgets are immovable within the dedicated silos I mentioned earlier.

What’s even more annoying is the constant reappearance of certain widgets I’ve removed from my home screen. Vascular Load, in particular, continues to appear on my dashboard. At this point, I’m unsure if this is just a bug or an intended feature.

It’s a minor issue for me, but one that would certainly confuse Galaxy Watch novices and less tech-savvy users.

The new Samsung Health is off to a (mostly) good start

Andy Walker / Android Authority

The Samsung Health redesign is a promising step in an exciting direction. It certainly is colorful, shows glimpses of usability improvements, and teases Galaxy Watch fans with plenty of new features. There is still a laundry list of clear misses and potential wins hiding in plain sight, though.

I expect Samsung Health to steadily receive updates once One UI 9 and the Galaxy Watch 9 series roll out, and hopefully, these upgrades will benefit newer watch owners and those who remain on legacy hardware.

For now, you might want to enjoy the old Samsung Health product while it’s still around.