The Galaxy Watch Active may have been released six months after the original Galaxy Watch but it couldn't be considered its successor. This was a more fitness-focused watch with an identity of its own. Samsung made one change to the Galaxy Watch Active that didn't sit well with fans. It ditched the physical rotating bezel.
We have come a long way since the Galaxy Watch Active was released. Samsung had released a couple of other models since then. The ones it has launched just now, though, are unlike any we've seen from the company so far.
Galaxy Watch 4 vs Galaxy Watch Active
The Galaxy Watch Active was only available in the 40mm size with a 1.1-inch display. Samsung's latest Galaxy Watch 4, the one without the rotating bezel, is available in 40mm and 44mm sizes with a 1.19-inch and 1.36-inch display respectively. These are also much higher resolution displays.
All of Samsung's smartwatches since 2018 have more or less had the same specs. The company has only just changed that with the Galaxy Watch 4. It comes with the first 5nm processor on a Samsung smartwatch, the Exynos W920.
The new chipset delivers 1.25x CPU and 10x GPU performance compared to the Galaxy Watch Active's Exynos 9110. The new smartwatches also have double the amount of RAM at 1.5GB and four times the RAM at 16GB.
The Galaxy Watch Active supported automatic tracking for six routines, the Galaxy Watch 4 can do it for many more. The latter also gets advanced health and fitness features like ECG, oxygen saturation monitoring, fall detection, body composition analysis and more.
The biggest change to impact the user experience is the platform used to run the new smartwatch. While the Galaxy Watch Active ran on Tizen like others before it, the Galaxy Watch 4 runs on the new Wear OS Android-based platform that Samsung has worked on with Google. This means that the new watches can run Android apps.
That's one of the reasons why Samsung gave the new wearables such a boost in the performance department. Samsung fans who have been waiting for the company to shake things up in the wearables department will certainly be pleased.
Do check out the full Galaxy Watch 4 vs Galaxy Watch Active specs comparison below. Stay tuned for the detailed Galaxy Watch 4 review that'll go up in due course.
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Samsung
Galaxy Watch 4 Classic (42mm)
Samsung
Galaxy Watch Active (40mm)
General Information
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Model Name
Galaxy Watch 4 Classic (42mm)
Galaxy Watch Active (40mm)
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Model type
Wearable
Wearable
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Colors
Silver ()Black ()
Sliver ()Black ()Rose Gold ()Green ()
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Announced
2021, August
2019, February
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Released
2021, August
2019, April
Physical specifications
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Dimensions
Watch: 41.5 x 41.5 x 11.2 mm
Watch: 39.5 x 39.5 x 10.5 mm
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Weights
46.5g
25g
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IP rating
5ATM + IP68 / MIL-STD-810G
5ATM + IP68 / MIL-STD-810G
Operating system
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Operating system
Wear OS
Tizen Based Wearable OS 4.0
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One UI version
Watch 3.0
Networks
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Networks
4G
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eSIM support
Yes
Display
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Kind
Main Display
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Technology
Circular Super AMOLED
Circular Super AMOLED
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Size
1.2 inch / 30.4 mm
1.1 inch / 27.94 mm
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Resolution
/ 396x396 pixels
/ 360x360 pixels
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Pixel density
330 PPI
302 PPI
