The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro are getting their grand unveiling on August 10, but there’s still time for a few rumors and leaks before then – and the latest ones give us a few more hints about pricing and battery life.
As per retail listings spotted by Dealntech (opens in new tab), the standard Galaxy Watch 5 will be €10 than the previous version of the smartwatch, while the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro (following on from the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic) is expected to be €30 more expensive.
That’s a drop of about $10 / £8.50 and a jump of about $30 / £25, so we’re not talking about huge shifts, but it’s worth bearing these possible fluctuations in mind if you’re planning on picking up one of the new wearables in the coming months.
Long lasting
There’s good news as well from reputable tipster Ice Universe (opens in new tab), who says that the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro is going to be able to reach up to three days of battery life – and considering last year’s model struggles to reach the end of the day, that’s a welcome improvement.
It would also put Samsung’s new premium smartwatch ahead of most other Wear OS smartwatches on the market in terms of battery life. Certainly when it comes to fully featured wearables with full color screens, more than a day of battery life is unusual.
How exactly the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro is going to achieve this feat remains to be seen: it’s possible that there’s some strict battery saver mode to conserve power. We’ll bring you all the details as soon as Samsung makes these devices official.
Analysis: the appeal of better battery life
While it’s no great hardship to connect smartwatches such as the Apple Watch 7 up to a power supply every evening, once you’ve made use of a wearable that can go for several days on a single charge, it’s difficult to then go back.
Take the solar-powered version of the Garmin Instinct 2, for example: through a combination of a monochrome display and a battery that can be topped up with sunshine, it’s capable of lasting up to a month between recharges. You can go away for a week or two without worrying about where your charger is.
To be fair, it’s not difficult to see why manufacturers struggle with this. Fully featured smartwatches use bright, colorful displays to show everything they need to show, and in terms of physical limitations there’s not a huge amount of room inside the body of a smartwatch to pack in a particularly big battery.
We’ve got no reason to doubt the latest leak around the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, so let’s hope that Samsung has found a way to stretch out the time between charges – it’ll certainly add to the appeal of the wearable once it goes on sale.