Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 just got this free World Cup upgrade

Samsung's November update for Galaxy Watch owners has a nice freebie for football fans

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 ball face
(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung's latest update for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 isn't just a security update and bug fix, although it's that too. It also includes a football-themed watch face, Ball, to mark the World Cup. It was originally released in Korea but has made its way to the US, and should be available in other countries too.

If you were hoping for a One Love-style rainbow, like the stadium bouncers refusing entry to people with rainbow flags I'm going to have to disappoint you; the new face is a colourful ball that you can customise based on the flags of your favourite team(s) rather than anything that could upset FIFA and its Qatari hosts. 

What's new in the Samsung November update for the Galaxy Watch 5?

According to the release notes, the Ball watch face is the only significant update here; otherwise it's just the usual stability and reliability updates and security patches.

The Ball watch face is straightforward enough, with coloured ellipses emanating from the centre of your watch and the colours corresponding to your chosen team. In the watch face gallery you'll see a selection of flags that correspond to the competing nations, and it's just a matter of tapping the one you want to use to transfer it from your Android phone to your Galaxy Watch.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).