Either Galaxy Watch users are suddenly sleeping better, or Samsung changed how sleep scores work

Data makes talking about certain subjects enormously easier, and that’s probably no more true than it is for quality of sleep. Sure, you could subjectively rate your experience as sleeping well or not, but it’s long been very difficult to actually compare that with anyone else’s experience, or even track our own experiences night-to-night. Fitness trackers and smartwatches have been absolutely game-changers in this regard, empowering us to finally do some data-driven analytics on what’s probably the biggest part of our lives that we’re also least aware of. But are you sure you can trust that data?

That’s a question that we spotted a number of Galaxy Watch users pondering over on Reddit, where user dylanchadderton got a post going about some curious changes to their sleep scores.

Like many other smartwatches, Samsung Galaxy Watch software monitors movement and other sensor data to calculate a sleep score between 1 and 100 for the quality of your night’s rest. While a lot goes into computing that number, it ultimately gives you a single, convenient point of comparison. And as a result, lots of us think about ways we can try and optimize our sleep in order to push that figure higher.

At least, you’d think that some kind of behavior change would be necessary to see any major shift in your sleep score numbers, but over in that Reddit discussion, we’re seeing multiple Galaxy Watch users all report the same phenomenon: their sleep scores used to be nothing special (maybe in the mid 70s), and then all of a sudden, over the course of the last few days, those numbers are solidly up in the high 90s.

If you’re immediately thinking that Samsung must have done something to change how it calculates that score, you’re not alone, as that’s the sentiment repeated by almost everyone who reports noticing this phenomenon — they don’t seem to notice it correlating to any real change in their sleep routine.

At least, that feels like it would be the most obvious explanation, but we’re open to the possibility of it being something unexpected, and have reached out Samsung asking about these incidents and whether or not something has indeed changed with the way Galaxy Watch software calculates your quality of sleep. We’ll update you if and when we hear anything. Until then, enjoy what’s apparently some exceptionally high quality rest!