What you need to know
- Samsung’s senior vice president Hon Pak briefly highlighted the company’s work at developing non-invasive glucose monitoring.
- Pak stated the feature would be “optically-based,” forgoing any needles, and could come with a nutrition coaching function.
- Speculation claims this feature could hit the Galaxy Watch 8.
- Hon Pak mentioned Samsung’s efforts at non-invasive blood sugar monitoring for a future Galaxy Watch more prominently since last year.
Amidst the Samsung Unpacked chaos, one of the company’s execs might’ve teased a strong future where we see a long-awaited health feature on a watch.
Samsung held a Health Forum in San Jose the day after Unpacked, where its senior vice president Hon Pak spoke about an old rumor: non-invasion glucose monitoring. According to Android Authority, Pak informed those at the forum that the company was working on a new “noninvasive optically-based continuous” glucose monitoring.
While this is likely technology designed for a future Galaxy Watch, Hon Pak declined to say anything further.
He stated that while the feature is “exciting,” he’s unable to explicitly state when it could launch — or with which product.
However, our friends at Tom’s Guide noticed the company published an editorial written by Hon Pak about the chase of non-invasive blood sugar monitoring. The post offers more details, stating that this optically-based feature will be joined by a newly developed “sensor algorithm.” This algorithm is said to predict “early signs of diabetes” for users.
Pak’s post also highlights the potential for a continuous integrated nutrition coaching feature alongside the basic monitoring functions Samsung is working on.
It seems that Samsung is leaning heavily on its AI software to help with the heavy lifting regarding its blood sugar monitoring and several other features. That’s no surprise considering how heavily it’s leaned into the “AI Phone” moniker, made obvious with its Galaxy S25 series. For now, speculation from our sister-site states this feature could debut with the Galaxy Watch 8, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Hon Pak seems confident in the research and development progress behind this, as he states that, once it arrives, it “will be a game-changer” so long as “we do it right.”
There’s been talk about potential blood sugar monitoring on a Galaxy Watch for a while now. What’s remained consistent in the talks is the fact that Samsung is working on a non-invasive method so users wouldn’t have to poke themselves with a needle. Samsung’s Hon Pak stated during an interview early last year that the company is “putting significant investment toward that” — “that” being glucose monitoring.
Curiously, Apple has discussed bringing such functionality to its smartwatch; however, nothing has happened as of yet. It seems that Samsung ramped up its development and research of the feature as a result.
Hon Pak resurrected the topic last spring, ahead of the Galaxy Watch 7 reveal later that summer. Diabetes and blood sugar monitoring were mentioned, as well as the possibility of adding in arrhythmia and hypertension for a future device. It was speculated at the time that a major hiccup in delivering this to consumers could be the regulatory factors down the road.
While this health feature was originally thought to be designed for the Galaxy Watch 7, we’re now turning our attention to the Watch 8. Of course, we’d love to see it — considering Samsung’s been working on this for a while — but we’ll just have to wait and see.