Samsung's preview of the One UI Watch platform at MWC gave us great reason to expect the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 4, or whatever wearable the company plans to announce later this summer

The company is now offering a "new, more powerful, and more powerful watch.

Currently referred to as the "new Galaxy Watch," it is confirmed to appear at the next Samsung Unpacked event. It will be the first smartwatch to run the next unified version of Google Wear OS.

Just as Samsung's smartphone software is built on Android, the One Watch UI will add a brand-specific layer to future Galaxy smartwatches. So while a series of Google programs will be adopted and card-based navigation will be employed, the new Galaxy Watch will get features optimized to make it a better device for Samsung users.

Apple's watchOS has always had the edge in enabling an edgeless experience, and the seamless software integration between iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, etc. has made the Apple Watch the best smartwatch year after year. Sure the Apple Watch 7 hardware will be great, but watchOS 8 is what Samsung should beat with the One UI Watch platform. So is it possible?

Samsung is only teasing One UI Watch, but from what we've seen, it's meant to act as an extension of Samsung's smartphones. Not only will the smartwatch's menus resemble those on the smartphone, but if the user changes certain settings on the smartphone, they will be applied to the watch as well.

Samsung showed off integration mechanisms to block phone numbers and add an international clock, and it appears that more of these extensions will be realized when the next Galaxy Watch debuts.

When users download new apps from the Google Play store to their Samsung smartphones, smartwatch versions of those apps will also automatically appear on the new watch. Even better, Samsung is working with third-party developers to make compatible smartwatch versions of popular apps available. In other words, One UI Watch should see more apps than Tizen previously offered.

In addition to smoothing the connection between Samsung smartphones and smartwatches, developers will have more options to bring their own branding to the Galaxy watch face library. Designers can use their own editing suite to create watch face themes, align text, curate fonts, and add animations.

Those familiar with watchOS may find the One UI Watch upgrade not so special. With the exception of the watchface design tools, Apple has already mastered most of what Samsung has promised future Galaxy Watch users.

Apple has practically perfected extending the iPhone experience to the Apple Watch, so much so that the Apple Watch experience is inversely benefiting the iPhone experience. Not only do users want to see iPhone information on their wrists, they also want to see Apple Watch information on their phones.

The Galaxy Watch is very good, but Samsung has yet to achieve the comprehensiveness of such a device. Getting there will require fundamental changes that emphasize functionality over flashiness, a change we haven't seen much of since the company released the first Tizen-powered Samsung Galaxy Watch in 2018.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4's abandonment of Tizen in favor of Wear OS is a game changer. It is clearly the push Google needs to grind out its Wear platform, but it is also the foundational change that Samsung needs to rethink its smartwatch strategy to compete with Apple.

Until the new Galaxy Watch arrives in a few months, we won't know if the new One UI Watch skin over the revamped Google Wear will be enough. But it seems ready to challenge watchOS in a way that competing smartwatch software has never been able to do.

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