Samsung
Samsung · Wearable · Filed Jun 11, 2026 · USPTO published Nov 12, 2026 · This week's release
Samsung Patents a Fix for Watches That Misread Altitude When You Flip Your Wrist
The waterproof gel that protects your watch's pressure sensor also weighs on it, so turning your wrist can shift an altitude reading by up to about 1.6 meters. Samsung's filing describes a way to cancel that weight out.
- Publication number
- US 2026/0358122 A1(US20260358122A1)
- Applicant
- SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
- Filed · Published
- Jun 11, 2026 · Nov 12, 2026
- Inventors
- Hyungjin SON, Kihun EOM
- Status when we published
- Waiting for an examiner
- Document
- 20 claims
- US classification
- 73/493
- Parent application
- Continuation of PCT/KR2024/018428 (filed Nov 20, 2024)(PCTKR2024018428)
What Samsung's gel-corrected altitude patent does
Every time you turn your wrist, the blob of waterproofing gel inside your watch's air-pressure sensor leans on the sensor chip a little differently. Gravity does that. The filing says the resulting error, about 0.1 to 0.2 hectopascals (a unit of air pressure), can equal an altitude mistake of 80 to 160 centimeters.
Samsung's answer starts at the factory. Engineers record how far the gel skews the reading when the sensor faces the ground, sits sideways, and faces away from the ground, then store those numbers in the sensor itself. Later, your device's motion sensor works out which way the pressure sensor is tilted, and the device subtracts the matching error.
The filing even shows the problem in a drop test: a device that flips mid-fall reports pressure going down while the real pressure rises. The correction is meant to fix that, and it can run only when an app needs precise readings, to save battery.
determine direction information of the barometric pressure sensor based on sensing data of the inertial sensor …
Translation: The watch uses motion sensors to figure out which way the air pressure sensor is facing.
How the watch cancels out the gel's weight
Samsung's filing covers a device with a waterproof air-pressure sensor plus a motion sensor. The pressure sensor is a tiny MEMS chip (a microscopic membrane that bends under pressure). The motion sensor combines an accelerometer and a gyroscope, which track tilt and rotation. In the main example, a gel covers the sensing element and its control chip (an ASIC, a small custom circuit). The gel's weight adds to the true pressure when the sensor faces the ground and subtracts from it when the sensor faces away.
The method has three steps:
- Work out which way the pressure sensor faces, using the motion sensor and the known angle between the two chips.
- Look up a correction. Offsets measured in advance for three directions (facing the ground, sideways, pointing away from the ground) are stored in the sensor's chip and fit into a quadratic polynomial (a simple curve) that gives a correction for any angle in between.
- Add that correction to the raw reading and report altitude or water depth.
To trust the angle, the device first checks whether it is moving calmly. If acceleration varies less than a set threshold, it reads tilt directly. Otherwise it takes the last calm reading and adds the measured rotation since then. The result is filtered, because the motion sensor reports about ten times for every three pressure readings.
In one worked example, a 38 degree tilt yields a correction of roughly -0.00957 hPa.
… determine a correction value in accordance with the direction information of the barometric pressure sensor, based on pressure offset data for the sensing element in a plurality of directions of the barometric pressure sensor …
Translation: It calculates an adjustment based on how wrist orientation changes pressure readings.
Why wrist-tilt errors matter for swimmers
If you wear a watch to track a swim, a night of sleep or a workout, your altitude and depth numbers come from tiny pressure readings. The filing says an error of 0.1 to 0.2 hectopascals can equal 80 to 160 centimeters of height, enough to throw off ball sports, fitness and Pilates tracking. The fix keeps the waterproof gel and adds a factory test plus some math.
The filing also describes a battery-saving twist. The correction can run only when a designated app is open, such as a health, sleep, swimming, fishing or emergency-call app, because constant motion sensing drains power. It names rings and headsets alongside watches, so the same idea could follow the sensor into smaller wearables.
Samsung's 34th filing we've tracked since June in our wearables that read your body watchlist follows one turning rings into a stylus and one separating heartbeat from arm movement.
Source: US 2026/0358122 A1 at the USPTO (PDF). Full patent text and figures are in the official publication.
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The drawings · 30 sheets
30 drawing sheets from US 2026/0358122 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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