Samsung has locked in July 22 for its next Unpacked event in London, and the headline act is a smartwatch built around a chip nobody expected to see on a Galaxy Watch this soon.
A rugged watch gets a proper chip upgrade
The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is expected to debut alongside the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch 9 Classic, and unlike its siblings, the Ultra model is reportedly the only one making the jump to Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite processor. The chip was announced at MWC 2026 in Barcelona and represents a genuine architectural shift for wearables. Built on a 3nm process with a dedicated Hexagon NPU, Qualcomm says the Wear Elite can run a two billion parameter AI model directly on the watch itself, which should make voice interactions and on-device AI features feel noticeably less laggy than anything Samsung has shipped before on a wrist-worn device.
The watch is expected to keep its 47mm titanium squircle case, sapphire crystal display, and 10ATM water resistance, so this is an internals refresh rather than a redesign. Firmware leaks point to a roughly 784mAh battery, about 35 percent larger than the original Ultra's cell, which paired with the Wear Elite's efficiency gains should meaningfully extend multi-day battery life even under heavy GPS tracking.
The bigger story is what connectivity split reveals
Separate firmware builds have surfaced for two distinct model numbers, one pointing to a 4G-only variant and another to a 5G-capable version, which would make the Ultra 2 the first Galaxy Watch to support 5G connectivity at all. Notably, leaks suggest the standard Galaxy Watch 9 will stick with the older Exynos W1000 chip, meaning the Wear Elite jump is exclusive to the Ultra tier this generation. That split matters commercially: Samsung appears to be using its most expensive watch to justify its most expensive chip, while keeping costs contained on the watches most people actually buy.
The Wear Elite is the first Snapdragon wearable chip built specifically for AI-focused watches, with genuine on-device model inference.
Why this positions Samsung differently against Apple
Samsung has chased the Apple Watch Ultra's rugged, sports-focused positioning since the original Ultra launched, and the resemblance has always been more than a little deliberate. What the Wear Elite chip changes is the AI competitiveness angle. Until now, Samsung's pitch against Apple Watch Ultra was hardware parity, similar durability, similar sensor suite, Android instead of iOS. A dedicated on-device AI chip gives Samsung a genuine differentiator to point to rather than just a spec-sheet match, particularly as both companies race to make their watches feel like proactive health assistants rather than passive trackers.
The India angle
India's smartwatch market has grown almost entirely on the strength of budget and mid-range devices from homegrown brands like Noise, boAt, and Fire-Boltt, which has made Samsung and Apple's premium tiers a comparatively small but high-margin slice of the category. A 5G-capable Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 lands at an interesting moment for India specifically, where 5G rollout has matured enough over the past two years that a standalone-connectivity smartwatch, one that can make calls and pull data without a paired phone nearby, actually has a practical use case in most metro cities now. That was not reliably true even eighteen months ago.
Pricing will be the deciding factor for how much traction the Ultra 2 gets here. The original Galaxy Watch Ultra launched in India north of 40,000 rupees, positioning it well above what most Indian buyers spend on a smartwatch, and any further increase tied to the new chip and 5G modem risks pushing it further into pure enthusiast territory. Samsung's retail and e-commerce partners in India will likely lean on EMI financing to soften that price jump, a pattern that has already become standard practice for premium smartphone launches in the country this year.
| Feature | Galaxy Watch Ultra (original) | Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 (expected) |
|---|---|---|
| Chip | Exynos W1000 | Snapdragon Wear Elite |
| Battery | ~590mAh | ~784mAh |
| Connectivity | 4G LTE only | 4G and 5G variants |
What to watch
The July 22 Unpacked event will also reveal the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Flip 8, so Samsung has a genuinely packed hardware slate that day. Watch for how Samsung prices the 5G variant relative to the 4G model, and whether the on-device AI features promised by the Wear Elite chip actually ship at launch or arrive as a staggered software update in the months after.
Published July 4, 2026. Gadgets365 will update this article as more information becomes available.
