New Delhi: Samsung’s Galaxy Watch has an odd little origin story tied to Indian traffic. When engineers at Samsung Research Institute-Noida tested the watch’s automatic cycling detection, it kept logging rides that never happened. The culprit was auto-rickshaws. Bumpy roads, a vibrating three-wheeler, and the software concluded its wearer was pedalling. The team dug into the false positives and reworked the algorithm.
It’s a small story, but it explains what the Noida centre is actually for. Set up in 2007, SRI-N works with Samsung’s global R&D teams on phones, wearables, tablets and software. Now it’s contributing to the Galaxy Watch9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra2, and running trials under Indian conditions to catch problems that wouldn’t show up elsewhere.
The features it’s tied to are fairly broad. Vital Tracker reads heart rate, heart-rate variability, skin temperature, respiratory rate and blood oxygen during sleep, and flags readings that drift from your normal range. Daily Cardio Load blends activity with recovery data, sleep included, to judge how hard you’re really training. There’s also trail running support, with navigation, uphill guidance and hydration alerts based on sweat, plus hearing health tools.
The India-specific side may matter more to everyday users. SRI-N built a health record for Samsung Health that complies with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, developed with Eka Care. Medication tracking comes through Tata 1mg, and a Find Care service, with Tata 1mg and PharmEasy, covers doctor consultations, medicine orders and lab bookings.
Here’s how it’s meant to work. You see a doctor, get a digital prescription, and Samsung Health uses AI to pull out the medication details and feed them into a tracker. With your consent, that can also land in your Ayushman Bharat Health Account. Reminders then carry over to the watch.
Amitabh Thapliyal, the centre’s vice president for service development, said the platform links wearable data with phones across activity, sleep, nutrition, mindfulness and vital signs. Managing director Kyungyun Roo said digital health is a key focus and that India-specific services have been rolling out over the past three to four years.
