Samsung today announced the Galaxy Watch FE, an entry-level addition to its lineup of smartwatches. The new wearable comes equipped with Samsung’s advanced BioActive Sensor, enabling a wealth of health and fitness monitoring features revolving around sleep, heart health, exercise, and overall wellness.
“At Samsung, we strive to bring health and fitness monitoring capabilities to as many people around the world as possible, helping them to make the changes needed to improve their wellness daily and help them reach their goals,” said Junho Park, VP and Head of the Galaxy Ecosystem Product Planning Team, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics.
“We’re excited to add the new Galaxy Watch FE to our wearables portfolio, offering more people access to personalized health insights that empower them to be motivated and stay healthier day and night.”
The Galaxy Watch FE is designed to be durable and stylish, boasting a 40mm aluminum case that comes in Black, Pink Gold, and Silver, and new watch bands. It champions a 1.2-inch Super AMOLED, Full Colour Always On Display protected by Sapphire Crystal glass and is powered by a dual-core Exynos W920 processor clocked at 1.18GHz.
In addition, the Galaxy Watch FE packs 1.5 GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 247mAh battery. The smartwatch has Wi-Fi for connectivity, along with LTE and/or Bluetooth 5.0. As for durability, the Galaxy Watch FE has an IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating, along with 5ATM of water resistance.
On top of health and wellness features like heart rate monitoring, Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification, Afib monitoring, sleep analysis, and workouts, Samsung also highlighted a host of other goodies the Galaxy Watch FE offers. These include Find My Phone functionality that works even when your smartphone isn’t connected to the watch, “Camera Controller,” which turns the wearable into a remote for connected Samsung smartphones’ cameras, and Samsung Wallet.
The “FE” in the Galaxy Watch FE’s name is presumably an abbreviation of “Fan Edition,” a moniker inherited from the more budget-friendly members of Samsung’s flagship smartphone lines over the past few years. Like its smartphone counterparts, the Galaxy Watch FE foregoes some of the more premium, superfluous features from flagship offerings like the Galaxy Watch 6 series while possessing much of the same technology and core functionality at a more affordable price.
The Galaxy Watch FE will be available in Canada in a Bluetooth-only model starting June 26. Samsung also plans to launch an LTE version of the smartwatch that will come out in the U.S. later this year, but there’s no word yet on expected availability in Canada.
The Galaxy Watch FE starts at $199.99 USD for the Bluetooth model in the U.S., but stay tuned for Canadian pricing.
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247mAh is tiny ( the champions in the smartwatch category have all over 500mAh, with Ticwatch 5 pro sporting a huge 628mAh which still only gives less than 4 days of use).
Interesting proposition – at this level maybe a smart band is a better choice.