Ive noticed when water lock is on, the back button also does not respond. If i receive a notification, look at my watch, i cant go back to see the time by pressing the back button like you could in ui5. The bezel doesn't respond till watch goes off then lift to back on. Im really disappointed on how slow the updates are rolling out and the lack of fixes.
The point of water lock is that no buttons or screen interactions register, except for the press and hold to end water lock.
As for the "slowness". Slow is better with a beta. Would you rather them rush updates out and inadvertently introduce a new bug that could possibly brick your watch?
Thats not correct, screen lock locks the screen, not the buttons or bezel, thats noted in the manual for oneui5 and works as it should in oneui5. Buttons work in oneui5 with water lock on. They do not work in oneui6 with water lock on except to turn it off. Bezel sometimes doesn't work either. As for the updates, yeah slow is better but not this slow.
Current design for Water lock in One UI 6 is to "lock" all screens/button/bezel to avoid any water damage on the device. In your case, Bezel would work as a "Wake-up" function for user to see the screen temporarily (Reacting slow would be a different issue, where we may need further analysis on memory usage, app performance, battery usage..etc š).
Which leads to your notification issue, where you can check your notifications but will remain on the screen unless the device screen is turned off (and returns back to Home screen / Time...). Because of the Water lock feature, you won't be able to return to your previous screen as "Every functionality is locked".
However, we appreciate your suggestion on Water Lock and will discuss a way to improve this feature in a more convenience way.
