Galaxy Watch Active 2 will soon be able to monitor your blood pressure

Samsung's Galaxy Watch Active series of smartwatches are of the better alternatives to an Apple Watch. The Galaxy Watch 2, in particular, is quite feature-rich. Like most fitness-centric wearables, it can track a host of bodily parameters. Now, it will also be able to measure your blood pressure.

Samsung just announced that the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) had given the Galaxy Watch Active 2 the green light to function as a device that can measure blood pressure. It will likely be done via a new app on the smartphone and will use the wearable's existing heart-rate sensor data as input.

However, there are a few extra steps involved before one can use the Galaxy Watch Active 2 to measure blood pressure. For starters, you'll need to input at least three readings using a traditional cuff-based sphygmomanometer. You can find out more about the calibration process in the attached video. Samsung relies on what it calls 'Pulse Wave Analysis' to translate the heart rate sensor's data into systolic and diastolic pressure.

Even though the South Korean government has cleared the Galaxy Watch Active 2 to function as a blood pressure monitoring tool, it'll be a while before the feature makes its way to smartwatches across the country. A global release could take even longer as it the Galaxy Watch Active 2 will have to get the green light from every country's health department. Samsung says that the app will be available to most users in Q3 2020.