Ahead of the release of the Galaxy Note 10 series later this week, Samsung has gone ahead and made the Galaxy Watch Active 2 official. The successor to the Galaxy Active, the new wearable from Samsung comes with built-in ECG.
Interestingly, while the original Galaxy Watch Active lacked a rotating bezel, Samsung has reintroduced it on the Active 2 but with a catch. This time around, the rotating bezel sits directly on the curved AMOLED display — it is basically a digital bezel that is always visible on the display. It can be rotated in both clockwise and anti-clockwise direction for navigating through the UI.
The Galaxy Watch Active 2 will be available in 40mm and 44mm sizes along with two styles: lightweight aluminum with a Fluoroelastomer band and a premium stainless steel version with a leather strap. The 40mm comes with a 1.2-inch circular AMOLED display, while the 44mm version comes with a 1.4-inch display.
Running Tizen with One UI on top of it, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 is powered by a dual-core Exynos 9110 chip running at 1.15GHz. It packs 768MB RAM along with 4GB of storage. There’s Samsung Pay support on the wearable as well which should make a lot of Gear S3 users happy.
The Watch Active 2 can record more than 39 workouts manually, with automatic workout tracking available for 7 of them including walking, cycling, running, rowing machine etc. The health sensors on the back have been upgraded making them faster and more precise. As for the built-in ECG, it won’t work at launch as Samsung is still waiting for FDA clearance.
The Galaxy Watch Active 2 will retail for for $279.99 and $299.99 for the 40mm and the 44mm versions. It will be available from September 27, 2019 and pre-orders will start in the first week of September.
Samsung will also sell an LTE variant of the Galaxy Watch Active 2 through major U.S. carriers.