Samsung Wallet and other features arrive for Galaxy Watch owners

Samsung today has announced a few new features that are available for Galaxy Watch owners, including Samsung Wallet. This comes just a week before Samsung is rumored to be launching the Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. The company’s latest upcoming smartwatches, which you’ll be able to reserve using Samsung Reserve to get $50 in Samsung credit when you pre-order.

In total Samsung is bringing three new features to Galaxy Watch devices. These will be available through apps released for the Galaxy Watch series. And one of them can be installed on devices right now. That app is WhatsApp, which was officially announced as being available on Wear OS 3 devices earlier today.

To install WhatsApp, you’ll need a smartwatch running on Wear OS 3. Which could be a TicWatch 5 Pro, a Pixel Watch, or a small number of other devices. For the Galaxy Watch family, you’ll need a Galaxy Watch 4 or Galaxy Watch 5 since these are the only watches from Samsung that run on Wear OS 3. WhatsApp will also be available for Samsung’s new watches that are arriving soon.

Samsung Wallet will arrive first on new Galaxy Watch devices

Samsung Wallet is already available to Galaxy smartphone owners. But it won’t be available for Galaxy Watch owners until a little later this Summer. Samsung confirms that the wallet app will arrive first on the new Galaxy Watch series. Which is rumored to be unveiled at next week’s Unpacked event that Samsung is holding in Seoul. It should also later arrive for older Galaxy Watch devices, though Samsung doesn’t mention any specific ones.

It does state that you will need a compatible Galaxy Watch smartphone though. So if you’re using a device from another brand, then you won’t be able to use the new Samsung Wallet app for Galaxy Watch. The third app coming to Galaxy Watch devices is Thermo Check. This uses the Skin Temperature API to measure the temperature of your surroundings without having requiring any physical contact Samsung says.

Like with Samsung Wallet, this app will drop first for the upcoming Galaxy Watch devices, and then arrive for Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 5 owners later this Summer.