Samsung's age-old Gear S3 and Gear Sport get hot new update with Bixby and many other cool features
Samsung has made some pretty great strides in the smartphone software support department over the last few years, rolling out major new updates for its high-end and even mid-range models considerably faster than ever before, but when it comes to long-term support, the company’s Android handsets still have nothing on its Tizen-powered smartwatch family.
Tipping the scales at a hefty (by smartwatch standards) 100MB+, the latest over-the-air update for the Samsung Gear S3 and Gear Sport brings Bixby assistance to the table to replace the soon-to-be-discontinued S Voice service. Of course, the digital assistant’s wrist functionality is fairly rudimentary, but anything is better than S Voice. Some of the stuff you’ll be able to do without using your hands now includes starting an exercise and asking the time difference between your location and a travel destination.
As for Galaxy Watch Active 2-borrowed features, some of the most notable ones are a bunch of new emoticons with a wider range of skin tones, easier access to apps running in the background, and an Always on Display tweak allowing you to read the screen with more ease while charging your smartwatch or setting it in the battery saving mode.
The lengthy changelog wraps up with a few other handy user interaction enhancements, aiming to improve sleep mode recognition, icon order customization in quick panel, and the intuitiveness of the pre-installed Timer and Stop Watch apps.