Samsung Health’s new Vitals feature could fix my biggest issue

I’ve spent the past week battling the flu, with my body giving what I can only describe as a half-hearted fight. Laughing often caused coughing fits, my breathing resembled wind whistling through canyons, and I spent the majority of the time in bed or propped up on the couch.

Yet through this all, my Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 pushed me to meet my activity goals and greeted my long periods of sleep with a frown in the Samsung Health app. That’s why when I read about the updates coming to Samsung Health, the ability to turn my data into meaningful insights is at the top of my wishlist.

It would be one thing if my smartwatch simply couldn’t track the metrics Samsung needed to tell that I was ill. But the data is all there. When I scoured through my sleep records, the app showed differences in my heart rate variability (HRV), greater fluctuations in my skin temperature, and an increased resting heart rate.

I use my Galaxy Watch for sleep tracking because it offers the most accurate metrics among the locally available brands I’ve tried. The watch and app noticed I was sleeping a lot more — an increase from my usual eight to nine hours to over 10. There was also a decrease in deep sleep. But the app couldn’t transform this into meaningful insights.

Days into my illness, it eventually flagged something. The app said that I was likely stressed (based on my HRV) and that I should practice mindfulness. That same night, it also prompted me to try to meet my activity goals at 11 pm. Thanks, Samsung, but I was planning on getting into bed.

When I finally started feeling better and was rediscovering the joys of breathing through my nose, the app congratulated me on managing my stress. It noted that my HRV had returned to its normal range. It’s strange that this data was attributed only to stress and nothing else. When my colleague Rita was ill, her Oura Ring 4 detected she was sick and used changes in her HRV as one of its data points.

I know to essentially ignore my smartwatch when it pushes me to do more when I’m not feeling well. But it’s still annoying to get notifications that you didn’t meet your goals. I also know plenty of people who don’t slow down when they feel ill — and these kinds of notifications would just add to the pressure to keep going.

Samsung is updating its Health app in the lead-up to the Galaxy Watch 9 launch. One of the major features will be a new Vitals dashboard. The feature will use five overnight metrics, measured against their resting baseline, to alert users of any meaningful deviations. These metrics include heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, skin temperature, and blood oxygen.

According to the company, this will help users determine whether someone needs rest or may be fighting an illness. I’m personally hoping that when the app detects that certain signals are under pressure, it will prioritize rest and stop sending prompts to increase activity.

I also think this would have been helpful the day before my flu. I had a really bad headache that day, but I just thought this was due to my fibromyalgia and recent medication changes. When I woke up the next morning with a slight cough, I thought this was just down to my usual allergies. It was only when the headache returned along with increasing chest sensitivity and nasal irritation that I realized I was getting sick. Had I realized I was getting sick, and not just experiencing allergies or a pain flare-up, I would have prioritized rest earlier.

These kinds of insights would also be much more useful than the energy score I currently get from the Samsung Health app. Even if I’ve only slept for four hours during the night, the app will give me a good energy score even though I’m barely functioning.

I’m hoping that Samsung’s update will make its measurements more useful to me, and banish the annoying nudges to keep moving when I’m not feeling well. But I also hope that it refines the existing features so that they become more insightful.

I am a bit concerned about what the Fitness Index entails for me, since it will compare my activity with that of other users. Considering the app doesn’t take factors like chronic illness into account, and therefore doesn’t account for the types of activities that can worsen a condition, I don’t know how helpful it will be.

However, at least with Vitals, I have something to look forward to.