The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3 could land soon with more storage and a bigger battery.
Where is the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3? It’s been well over a year since the Watch Active 2, and we thought a successor would be here by now, but clearly the company isn’t putting its watches out in yearly cycles as Apple does for the Apple Watch. We thought the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3 was going to be launched at Samsung Unpacked 2020 in August, but the smartwatch there was the Galaxy Watch 3, so that’s the wearable the company is pushing right now. The latest information to leak out online suggests the Active 3 will be skipped entirely, and we’ll get the Galaxy Watch Active 4 launching at the same time as the Galaxy Watch 4 during the first half of 2021. A number of things have been leaked and rumored about the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3 (or Active 4), all of which you’ll find below, along with more precise information on the likely release date. Based on current leaks it sounds like the Galaxy Watch Active 3 could be visibly similar to its predecessor, but with some significantly upgraded internals, which could be enough to make it one of the most exciting smartwatches of the year. But there’s plenty that we don’t know yet, so we’ve also included a list of all the things we want from the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3. The Galaxy Watch Active 2 was just a minor upgrade on its predecessor, so we want big changes here. It’s unclear exactly when the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3 will land. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 was announced in August 2019, so given that a lot of smartwatches release on a yearly schedule it’s overdue. There is evidence that a new Samsung smartwatch is coming soon though, as wearables with model numbers associated with such a device have recently been spotted. The model numbers are SM-R86x and SM-R87x, but we can’t say for sure whether these are for the Galaxy Watch Active 3, the Galaxy Watch 4, both, or some other wearable altogether. In fact, it now looks more likely that the Galaxy Watch Active 3 will get skipped entirely (just like the Galaxy Watch 2 was), and that Samsung will start numbering its flagship watch and the Active variant in the same way in 2021. As for the price, there aren’t any rumors about that yet, but the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 had a starting price of $279.99 / £269 / AU$549, so we’d expect the Watch Active 3 will be at least that much – except perhaps in Australia, which didn’t get the smaller (and therefore cheaper) version of the Watch Active 2, but might well get the smaller Galaxy Watch Active 3. Everything we’ve written below refers to a watch that we thought would be called the Galaxy Watch Active 3. However, we’re now being led to believe that the successor to the Galaxy Watch Active 2 will be the Galaxy Watch Active 4 – so there won’t be a ‘3’ model at all.
