Samsung managed to incrementally increase the battery capacity of the 44 mm Galaxy Watch4 compared to its predecessor, but that wasn’t the case for the 40 mm model. A certification by Safety Korea shows that both sizes are getting upgraded in the next generation.
It will be an incremental upgrade again, week-long battery endurance still isn’t possible for full-fledged smartwatches.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch5 40 mm (EB-BR900ABY) will have a 276 mAh battery, up from 247 mAh (+29 mAh). The larger Watch5 44 mm (EB-BR910ABY) will have a 397 mAh battery, up from 361 mAh (+36 mAh).
Samsung Galaxy Watch5 batteries: 247 mAh for the 40 mm model • 397 mAh for the 44 mm model
Note that this is for the vanilla watch and we’re not 100% sure about the sizes (e.g. the Watch3 had a 45 mm version, not 44 mm). We haven’t seen other versions of the Watch5 be certified either.
Of course, battery life is a function of two things – battery capacity and the efficiency of the hardware. The Watch4 generation introduced the Exynos W920, a 5 nm chip, which is more efficient than the 10 nm Exynos 9110 used in the Watch3 series and the 12 nm Snapdragon Wear 4100 used in some non-Samsung watches. By the sound of it, 4 nm foundries are running at full capacity, so a new, more efficient wearable chipset is unlikely.
Previously, we heard that Samsung has found a way to integrate a thermometer into the next-gen watch, which will be used to track skin temperature (useful to detect early signs of infection as well as tracking ovulation cycles).
The Galaxy Watch5 generation won’t be unveiled until the second half of this year, we should see more details leak out as the new models get closer to launch.
Source 1 | Source 2 (in Korean) | Via