Earlier this week, users of the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic from Samsung were treated to some unnerving news. A new, seemingly harmless firmware update began rolling out, and some users let their watches turn off only to find out they wouldn't turn on again. Having your watch just randomly pass away is, of course, not intended behavior, so Samsung pulled the update to avoid more users from losing their watches. Now, the company has issued a "fixed" update — except it looks like Samsung didn't quite nail the source of the problem, as users are still reporting dead watches following the update.

Samsung has released a new firmware update for the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic (via 9to5Google). The update carries a version number ending in GVK4, and it comes with bug fixes and feature improvements as well as with the November 2022 security patch. Samsung also said that a "power operation-related stabilization code" is applied in this update, seemingly in an attempt to fix the issue of watches dying.

It appears, however, that Samsung was not entirely successful. Reports of dead watches after the new GVK4 update are dripping in on Reddit and other online forums. It's too early to say if it's happening as frequently as it was happening with the previous update (GVI3), and we also can't jump to the conclusion that Samsung didn't fix anything here.

If this gets bad enough, Samsung will likely have to pull this update once again and leave it in the oven for more time. As per one Reddit post, Samsung's support was offering its author a free repair or a $210 credit towards a Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. There are also users who have reported no issues with this update, so really, your mileage may vary — some speculate it may be related to the age of the smartwatch, with older units apparently being more prone to these issues. The Galaxy Watch 4 is still one of the best smartwatches you can get, and if you have one, you probably want to take care of it, so we'd recommend you to not update your watch until further notice.