3 Features Only Samsung Galaxy Watches Have

It’s been almost 13 years since Samsung launched its first smartwatch, the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Although the company discontinued the Gear brand in 2018, it continued to release new smartwatches every year. As a result, it has one of the most impressive smartwatch portfolios among Android manufacturers and makes some of the best Wear OS smartwatches. This extensive experience in smartwatches has allowed the company to introduce new features before its competitors, some of which have not yet appeared on any other consumer smartwatch.

For example, Samsung is widely known for popularizing a mechanical rotating bezel in its smartwatches. Although the company discontinued it for a while and switched to a digital bezel, feedback from fans and critics led the company to bring it back with the Classic line in 2021, and it continues to be part of the company’s latest Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. While Withings offers its own version of a mechanical rotating bezel in some of its smartwatches, some features of the Samsung Galaxy Watch remain missing from other mainstream smartwatches.

With the Galaxy Watch 7 line, Samsung has added an improved BioActive sensor in its smartwatches, which allows tracking of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), something you won’t find in any other consumer smartwatch model. AGEs accumulate over time in a person’s body tissues and can reflect the overall biological aging process, while also providing an indication of metabolic health. The updated sensor array contains ultraviolet, violet, yellow and red LEDs that can track AGEs using skin autofluorescence.

Samsung offers a sliding scale that indicates the level of EFAs in a person’s body, from low (optimal) to high. Although EFA levels don’t fluctuate wildly on a daily basis, over long periods of time they can indicate whether you’re eating too many processed foods, foods high in sugar, and heavily fried meals. However, remember that smartwatches are predictive wellness tools, not diagnostic devices, which makes these indices good tools for detecting long-term behavioral trends. You can only find AGE Index support on the Galaxy Watch 7 and newer models, as it requires newer hardware.

Another feature you’ll only find on Samsung devices among consumer smartwatches is body composition measurement, thanks to the built-in Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) sensor. This feature essentially allows Samsung smartwatches to measure your body composition, including body fat percentage, body water content, and skeletal muscle mass. It sends a low-level microcurrent through your upper body and measures how well your muscles, blood vessels and organs conduct it. The current resistance level can tell the smart watch how much of your body is muscle mass, water and fat.

All Samsung smartwatch models since the debut of the Galaxy Watch 4 series include the necessary BIA hardware. Although Samsung’s body composition measurement is based on solid science, its implementation in a smartwatch can become slightly problematic and result in upper body biases and hydration sensitivity not present in a multi-thousand dollar BIA device in a medical clinic. As a result, like the AGE Index, this feature is also better suited as a practical trend tracking tool rather than a precision clinical tool.

The Antioxidant Index found on Samsung smartwatches is another feature that you won’t find on any other consumer smartwatch. Although the name of the feature is a bit simplistic, it actually scans your body for carotenoids. These are organic, red, yellow and orange pigments that reach your body with your fruit and vegetable diet and are considered a reliable marker of your actual fruit and vegetable intake. Samsung smartwatches send a combination of different wavelengths of light into your skin and track how much light is absorbed and reflected.

Samsung smartwatches use this measurement as an indicator of your overall antioxidant health. This assumes that if your carotenoids are high, you are probably eating a nutrient-dense diet. The Antioxidant Index score is offered from 0 to 100, with the highest score being best. It is not intended for medical use and the impact of your diet may take up to two weeks to show in the antioxidant index. It is only available on the Galaxy Watch 8 series and received a notable update in June 2026 as part of Samsung’s next-gen Galaxy Watch features.