Each new year is a new race between tech companies to launch the best, and most innovative products on the market. While the September spot is reserved by Apple for the launch of its iPhones, August is Samsung’s time to shine with the Unpacked event. Today, along with the new foldable devices-Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Fold 3, the South Korean tech giant also announced the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series-the fruit of its partnership with Google.
The new series comes with two new variants-Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, each with a different feel to suit the needs of different customers.
The Galaxy Watch 4 looks completely different from the previous iterations of the Galaxy Watches, with no round rotating bezels (which have become the standout factor for a Samsung Watch). However, the other version, appropriately deemed ‘Classic’, is the true follow up to the previous iterations, and follows the design of its predecessors rotating bezels included.
The Galaxy Watch 4 will come in two sizes-40mm and 44mm, while the Classic version will stand a little bigger at 42mm and 46mm.
Both versions of the watch will come with the same screen sizes and resolutions, with a choice of either a 1.2-inch 396 x 396 display in the smaller body or a 1.4-inch 450 x 450 display in the larger one.
Both of these will be powered by the new Exynos 920 chipset, which Samsung claims is the first “5nm Processor Powering the Next Generation of Wearables.” The chip will offer high performance, efficiency and LTE connectivity, thanks to the new 5nm manufacturing technology. This does not come as a surprise, since competitors like Google and Apple are also designing their own in house chips, and to make sure that it can keep running the race, Samsung would have had to come up with something of its own as well.
It must also be noted that Apple’s M1 chip announced last year was the first 5nm chip announced by the industry.
Both watches will come equipped with 1.5GB of RAM, alongwith 16GB of storage.
Much like every other smartwatch on the planet, health is a big factor for the new Galaxy watches as well, which come equipped with a pulse oximeter, heart rate sensor, blood pressure monitoring, and ECG. Moreover, it will also feature a new type of scanner to monitor body composition, called the bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), which will estimate the wearer’s body fat percentage. However, the tools we have to monitor body fat percentages are usually not super accurate, and thus, it remains to be seen if the results provided by this new sensor are actually good or not.
The biggest update, however, is the new OS (as many had been expecting) which is a fruit of the partnership between Google and Samsung, both of which have been trying to dethrone Apple as the biggest smartwatch maker in the Silicon Valley to no avail. Google had confirmed during its I/O conference earlier this year that it has entered in a partnership with Samsung, and today, we see the results.
The new OS, named the Watch OS 3, is a combination of the best elements from Google’s Watch OS and Samsung’s Tizen. However, the OS on Samsung devices will be called One UI Watch, with Samsung’s own optimizations and skin sitting on top of the Watch OS.
With this new partnership, Samsung watches will be able to make use of Google services like Maps, GPay, YouTube etc.
The Watch 4 Classic starts at $349 for the Bluetooth model, rising to $399 for the LTE model. The lower Watch 4 starts at a price of $249 (or $299 with LTE). Both are available to preorder today, and ship August 27th.
