Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 is catching up to the Apple Watch with fertility tracking
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Samsung has announced that its latest smartwatches are getting a health feature upgrade thanks to a new partnership with Natural Cycles. After the update, your Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro can measure your skin temperature and determine what stage of your menstrual cycle you are in (provided you have a menstrual cycle).
Fertility tracking was a big addition to last year’s Apple Watch 8 and Apple Watch Ultra, which are paired exclusively with the top of the range iPhones, putting these rivals ahead of Samsung’s offerings. Thanks to this upcoming Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 update (scheduled to be released in the “second quarter” of the year, read: sometime in April, May or June), Samsung is now able to close some of the gap between its smartwatches and Apple’s, especially in the eyes of pregnancy-conscious consumers.
Unfortunately, those of you who own another Android phone are still out of luck – the Cycle Tracking feature is only available through the Samsung Health app which is only available on Galaxy phones running Android 8.0 or later.
The Natural Cycles feature also won’t be available to all users right away, such as those of you living in Australia, but will be launching in the US, UK, Ireland and 29 other countries (opens in new tab).
What is Natural Cycles?
Natural Cycles is an FDA and CE approved app (US and EU respective medical regulatory agencies) that is said to be able to track a person’s menstrual cycle with a high degree of accuracy.
Each morning, a user logs their body temperature into the app — as well as any optional details about their period if they’re having one, or if they’re sick or hungover — and Natural Cycles’ algorithm uses this data to determine if they’re ovulate or not.
If you’re trying to start a family, Natural Cycles claims (opens in new tab) her services help people conceive in “3 cycles or less”. Alternatively, for those of you trying to avoid pregnancy, Natural Cycles shows off (opens in new tab) that 93% of typical users did not get pregnant over the course of a year following the app’s advice – compared to 93% who relied on the birth control pill and 87% of people who relied on condoms alone.
But if you’re planning to use Natural Cycles in any way – be it through the existing app or the Samsung Health service – we recommend you talk to your doctor first and follow their advice.