Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra: Early adopters complain of quality control issues, short battery life and software bugs

Samsung has only just started delivering Galaxy Watch Ultra (curr. $649.99 on Amazon) pre-orders. Unfortunately, it seems that the company's first crack at producing an 'Ultra' smartwatch is experiencing quality control issues. While this is not necessarily unusual, they arrive shortly after similar problems with early Galaxy Buds3 Pro earbuds appeared online.

For example, one Redditor has demonstrated that their Galaxy Watch Ultra arrived with a misaligned display, evidence of which we have embedded below. Consequently, first-party watch faces do not match the smartwatch's markings, which denote five-minute increments. Thankfully, it appears that this issue only affects a handful of smartwatches. By contrast, there are plenty more instances of people experiencing software bugs at launch.

Specifically, some owners have been experiencing automatic screen brightness activating at night, despite the setting being disabled. Moreover, there are instances of Wi-Fi connectivity regularly dropping out for no particular reason, as well as battery life that barely reaches 24 hours, let alone Samsung's claimed 100-hour runtimes. Presumably, Samsung will address these issues in time, particularly as One UI 6 Watch is also the first outing for Wear OS 5. Nonetheless, it is not a great look for Samsung as it attempts to pull people away Apple's ecosystem with its alternatives.