Alleged Wear OS Galaxy Watch 4 battery capacity brings good and bad news

By Derrek Lee
published

Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 Black Lifestyle
Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 Black Lifestyle (Image credit: Samsung)

What you need to know

  • New details have emerged about Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Watch 4.
  • A report alleges that the smartwatch will feature at least one model with a larger battery capacity.
  • There are still no details around when to expect Samsung's next smartwatch.

While Samsung gears up for its next Galaxy Unpacked event, more details have emerged about the company's alleged Wear OS smartwatch. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has been rumored for some time, although specific details of the device have been pretty scarce. The latest report gives us an idea of what we can expect regarding battery capacity with some good news and some bad news.

According to The Elec (via 9to5Google) the upcoming Galaxy Watch 4 will sport slightly different battery capacities from its predecessors. The 41mm version will reportedly come with a 240mAh battery, slightly down from the 247mAh battery on the same size Samsung Galaxy Watch 3. Meanwhile, the battery capacity for the larger 45mm model will be increased to 350mAh, up from 340mAh on the sams size Galaxy Watch 3. We can likely expect these same numbers for the Galaxy Watch 4 Active as well.

The company that was chosen to produce the battery for the smaller model apparently comes with some cost-saving benefits for Samsung, which means we could be looking at a fairly cheaper watch. The choice to lower the battery capacity does raise some eyebrows, considering Wear OS doesn't have the best track record with efficiency. Hopefully, this means Samsung will be taking advantage of the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 chipset, which has apparently done wonders for the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS. The larger Galaxy Watch 4 will come with a battery made by Samsung's own battery manufacturing division.

Samsung already makes the best Android smartwatches around, and while battery life may not be stellar, watches like the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 fare better than most of the best Wear OS watches. It'll be interesting to see how Samsung will approach battery life concerns for its upcoming model whenever it decides to launch.

Derrek Lee
Derrek Lee
News Editor

Derrek is a long-time Nokia and LG fanboy who loves astronomy, videography, and sci-fi movies. When he's not working, he's most likely working out or smoldering at the camera.

8 Comments
  • It's almost like they're afraid to put a legit sized battery in their watches. Seems like every year it gets smaller. I get that tech is supposed to be more efficient, but why not get more efficient and you know, leave the same sized battery for even more uptime or make it even better and stop playing the 2 day charge cycle game. I can honestly say that most of the people on the fence about getting a smart watch complain about needing to constantly charge it. Like me, they were all coming from real watches or fitness trackers so going from a year plus with a regular watch, or 20+ days with a fitness tracker, 1-2 days of battery life is a major turnoff.
  • The issue is size.
  • Yea, size is the reason why I'm holding out on a smartwatch.
  • This was the ideal opportunity to add solar charging to bridge the shortfall in battery life going from Tizen to WearOS
  • Solar charging isn't going to work on a smart watch. There's no actual proof that Wear OS is less power efficient. Anything would have bad battery life on those awful Qualcomm chips.
  • That's a very interesting point.
  • Ive got the Ticwatch Pro 3 and the battery life is significantly better on the 4100. Apparently HMR2 update should make it around 20% better again and im at 4 days as it is.
  • Solar Charging works just fine for Garmin's 🤷🏻‍♂️