Samsung’s revamped Samsung Health app, rolled out ahead of the Galaxy Watch 9 debut and One UI 9 rollout, brings a brighter dashboard, faster shortcuts to Activity, Sleep, Vitals, Mindfulness, and Nutrition—and interactive graph upgrades in some places. But th
When the redesigned Samsung Health app landed, the first reaction was immediate: disgust and disappointment. After hours inside the new interface, the feelings didn’t disappear—so much as split in two. The app feels bolder and quicker to navigate in some places. In others, it turns everyday health data into something harder to trust and harder to use.
Samsung Health’s major visual overhaul arrived ahead of the Galaxy Watch 9 debut and the One UI 9 rollout. and it’s a striking shift from the utilitarian look the app has carried through years of Galaxy Watch and fitness tracking updates. This time. the interface leans hard into color—so much so that the redesign can feel like it’s trying to outshout the information it’s meant to present.
Color is everywhere, but it doesn’t explain itself
The biggest “miss” is also the most obvious one. The redesigned app makes prolific use of color—an ombre background, bright widget cards, and vivid graphs embedded throughout the experience.
For a long stretch of Samsung Health’s history, color helped set expectations. In the Galaxy S8 days. a single color corresponded to specific metrics—green for activity and blue for sleep. for example. In the new version, those relationships are gone. Purples are used for calories and sleep scores. blues for workouts and body composition. and orange is used as the default shade for stress and food. The result. in the reviewer’s view. is incoherence: colors that don’t line up with what users might instinctively expect.
It’s not simply a matter of taste. The complaint is practical: color for color’s sake becomes a problem when the app is presenting pertinent data, and the form doesn’t complement the function.
At the same time, the redesign clearly isn’t all about aesthetics alone. Samsung Health also adds a top shortcuts bar aimed at reducing time spent hunting through menus. The shortcuts sit along the top of the screen and let the user jump directly to Activity. Sleep. Vitals. Mindfulness. and Nutrition.
A sixth option brings the user back to the dashboard—the space where health widgets can be twisted. resized. and reorganized. The reviewer describes scooting. expanding. and shrinking widgets as reminiscent of smartly designed weather apps. and it’s framed as a natural fit for a health interface packed with metrics.
Those “silos. ” as the reviewer calls them. appear to solve a specific pain point from the previous UI: the growing list of indicators used to make the search for specific information harder. With the new shortcuts. the reviewer says there’s no need to guess where something is pinned—for example. body composition appears via Nutrition. Running Coach lives under Activity. and heart rate can be found under Vitals.
Still, Samsung Health’s graph upgrades feel uneven
Graphs are essential in any health-tracking app, especially when the data comes from smartwatch sensors. This redesign does focus on graphs—but it’s a hit-or-miss.
Some graphs can be pinched or expanded to narrow or broaden the X axis. the reviewer says. but the feature only applies to a handful of graphs rather than every single one. The Sleep graph, for instance, shows tiny lines charting when the reviewer is restless throughout the night. That same graph exists in previous versions too. but the reviewer wants to zoom in on specific hours to investigate what happened. Yet the Sleep graph doesn’t support pinching.
The limitation is confusing because other Sleep-related graphs behave differently depending on whether the data is viewed through the Sleep widget. The reviewer notes that sleeping heart rate and sleeping blood oxygen share the same “no pinch” limitation via the Sleep widget. Meanwhile, heart rate and blood oxygen graphs while awake do support pinching. The mismatch is what makes it feel less like a design choice and more like something inconsistent inside the system.
What’s missing: a way to stack multiple metrics into one story
There’s another limitation the reviewer keeps coming back to: Samsung Health still lacks a comprehensive graph page that supports stacking multiple metrics together.
That capability would let the reviewer understand how data shifts over time across indicators and throughout the day or night. Instead, Samsung Health offers a Compare data option at the bottom of most indicator pages, which lets the user add one more metric to view.
The reviewer calls it useful, but limited—and gives examples of where it falls short. With the current approach. the user can’t compare total steps with sleep time. or exercise and body composition’s skeletal muscle indicator. They also can’t test whether long afternoon walks line up with sound sleep. or whether an exercise regimen is building muscle while overall weight increases.
And even when comparison is possible, it’s constrained to data points within specific metrics. Sleep time against sleep score, for example, can be compared—just not across different categories the way the reviewer wants.
New features arrive—but not for older watches
One reason Samsung is rolling out this redesign is to make space for new health features introduced with One UI 9, designed to be compatible with an upcoming selection of wearables.
The reviewer is using a Galaxy Watch 4, which means many of those One UI 9-related features don’t work on their watch. They list the frustration clearly: Galaxy Watch 7 features don’t support Galaxy Watch 4 either.
Samsung does, however, include unsupported feature widgets on the dashboard by default, the reviewer says—effectively making the app advertise what can’t be used.
During initial setup, the reviewer finds widgets for Hearing, Fitness Index, Daily cardio load, Heart Health, Vitals, and Vascular load. None of them work with their Galaxy Watch 4. The reviewer describes two options: accept wasted space, or manually hide these widgets from the dashboard.
There’s a further annoyance. These widgets can’t be moved within the dedicated silos. The reviewer also reports a separate problem—certain widgets they removed keep reappearing. Vascular Load is specifically named as continuing to show up on the dashboard. leading the reviewer to wonder whether it’s a bug or an intended feature.
For a newcomer to Galaxy Watches, the reviewer says, this could be especially confusing.
A promising start with a long list to fix
By the end of the review, Samsung Health’s redesign is described as a promising step in an exciting direction. The reviewer points to the colorful UI, glimpses of usability improvements, and the way the app tees up Galaxy Watch fans with plenty of new features.
But the misses remain loud: a color scheme that doesn’t correlate to the data it represents, inconsistent graph interactions like pinch-to-zoom, a lack of a stacked multi-metric graph page, and One UI 9 feature widgets that don’t work on legacy hardware.
The expectation is that Samsung Health will receive updates as One UI 9 and the Galaxy Watch 9 series roll out, and that newer features will better serve newer watch owners as well as those still on legacy devices.
Until then, the reviewer’s advice is blunt: for now, users may want to enjoy the old Samsung Health app while it’s still available.
Samsung Health Galaxy Watch 9 One UI 9 health tracking app smartwatch sensors data visualization graph pinch to zoom wearable compatibility UI redesign