17 March 2025

Trying to monitor just how interrupted my sleep is I've bitten the bullet and picked up a Galaxy Watch4 Classic reconditioned unit to keep the price down. It was supplied with a new silicon strap, but that has already broken and I think that is contributing to the failures in taking readings via it. The initial problem was that the watch needed to be updated, and initially I could not see how to action that, but eventually it started some large downloads. It took me a little while to realise that it was uploading every update from it's 'factory reset' condition and a number of years worth of large updates, in excess of 4Gb of software, much of which was then replaced with a later update. It's now up to version 6 of the UI I think from March last year and given the heavy load on the battery, it took several hours sitting on the charger to complete. I even ended up putting it in the freezer to help keep the temperature down since it kept stalling due to being over temperature!

Over night it's done a reasonable job of tracking my sleep, but was down to 40% again and I put it back on the charger for over an hour to get back to 100% so now it's ready for today's exercise cycle. I'm not sure just how much of the day it will have to be charging and therefore missing out on activity so will have to track that as well.

I have managed to get the blood pressure and ECG functions to give readings. The blood pressure calibration took several tries and I have not got any new readings today. It is showing the erratic pulse rate that is what I am TRYING to monitor over the day, and it would seem that unless it's seeing a clean regular pulse it's unable to cope? Need a bit more data to confirm that, and probably a better quality strap to maintain proper contact with ny skin, but the lack of any fat around my wrist does seem to be an additional factor. Moving the watch further up my arm gives a different result and is something the watch keeps prompting to do.

Since I've got another 12 days to check it out before I need to return it as unusable, and I don't have any confidence that it will be able to do the job is was bought to do.