Every Android smartwatch needs to copy these three Galaxy Watch 8 features

For the past week, I've been using the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and Samsung's new wearable has a host of features that help it stand out.

The Classic variant features the iconic rotating bezel, while the regular variant has a digital capacitive bezel that allows you to scroll through menu items. Beyond these changes, both wearables use the same underlying platform to offer the same suite of health features.

New features on the platform include several new health sensing and diagnosis capabilities, which build upon the excellent features introduced in the Galaxy Watch 7 and prior models.

Here are three Galaxy Watch 8 features that every wearable should imitate.

Sleep Coaching and Tailored Bedtime Recommendations

When's the last time you had a great night's sleep? If you're anything like me, it might have been a while, and often, I struggle to figure out why.

The Galaxy Watch 8 combines two features into one Sleep suite, and it could make all the difference. I've yet to try the Sleep Coaching on the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, but it's designed to represent your sleep patterns as a Sleep animal and then provide different recommendations to improve it over time.

This feature isn't new to the Galaxy Watch 8, but it remains one of the most elegant ways to identify and display sleep data. I used it on the Galaxy Watch 7 last year and improved my sleep by three levels during the three weeks. It would have continued to improve if I had always worn the wearable.

That said, new to the Galaxy Watch 8 is how the data is collected and used for tailored bedtime recommendations. The Galaxy Watch 8 can analyze your Circadian rhythm and combine that with your sleep pressure (or sleep debt) to help identify the ideal time to sleep.

So far, Samsung's approach to Sleep is one of the best amongst its rivals.

The Antioxidant Level check

One of the two big features announced on stage during the Galaxy Watch 8 launch is the Antioxidant Level Check. This is designed to allow you to test the surface of your skin and understand how different foods affect the balance of oxidants in your blood and on your skin.

It uses the new yellow, blue, violet, and IER LEDs to detect the different levels of carotenoids in your skin. There are many kinds of carotenoids, but the Galaxy Watch 8 measures a small subset that are found in common food items, such as red and yellow peppers, carrots, and other root vegetables.

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It's the first smartwatch to feature this measurement, but as all wearable makers focus deeper on providing a holistic overview of your health, understanding the foods you eat and their impact will become even more key.

Currently, this feature updates only moderately quickly, providing medium-term and long-term recommendations with weekly updates; however, there's considerable potential in this area. Samsung is working on smart glasses, and the company's Food Plus service offers a useful alternative to MyFitnessPal.

Discussing the feature with a Samsung executive on a small panel, it was clear that the potential for this feature is huge, especially as additional form factors become mainstream and the camera-enabled Samsung Smart Fridge evolves.

Vascular load while asleep

The second hero feature is the new Vascular load measurement that occurs while you sleep. Although it may not sound as impressive as the immediacy and quantifiable metrics provided by other features, this could be one of the most important additions to the lineup.

The majority of cardiac and Vascular infarctions occur while you're asleep, as this is when major underlying health conditions can be most apparent. The stress on my heart culminated in a heart attack five years ago, and recovery involved careful monitoring - in the hospital and at home - of my Vascular system, as a 95% blockage was the root cause.

The new vascular load feature is designed to measure and monitor whether your heart is pumping blood through your arteries efficiently. It measures the resistance to blood flow (resistive load) and the stiffness of the arteries (pulsatile load) to determine whether your heart is working properly. Too much pressure or too stiff arteries can lead to more serious conditions, including heart failure like mine.

This is the type of feature that many people won't need, but for those who do, it could prove to be lifesaving. Had this feature existed five years ago when I had my heart attack, I have little doubt that it could have alerted me to underlying problems and prompted me to seek medical advice before the heart attack occurred.

Every wearable maker offers some form of cardio monitoring, but far fewer offer to track the stress on your heart. The Pixel Watch 3 does track your cardio load, but not specifically while asleep. The Galaxy Watch 8 is unique in this regard, but I hope I never need to use this feature.

A new holistic era for health

These new features are the latest additions to a long line of features designed to provide a single place to track your health data and offer a holistic overview, complete with personalized recommendations.

They aren't the only new features, however, as the same executive panel saw Samsung reveal that the Galaxy Watch 8 is the first smartwatch to identify an ectopic heartbeat as one of the possible ECG results. There's also a broad range of sensors, all of which provide a wide swathe of health data.

Combined with the existing feature set from previous wearables, the Galaxy Watch 8 is clearly one of the most feature-rich wearables you can buy. I hope more of the best smartwatches choose to copy these features. Perhaps we'll see something similar with the Google Pixel Watch 4 when it launches in August?