GoKawiilZac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
TL;DR Samsung introduced the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chip and a massive 800mAh battery (up 35% from 590mAh), yet official estimates still quote the same “up to 60 hours with Always-On Display” as the original Watch Ultra model.
The Galaxy Watch 9 models also increased battery sizes and switched from Exynos W1000 to Snapdragon Wear Elite, but Samsung continues to quote up to 40 hours of runtime without Always-On Display across both generations.
The lack of runtime improvement despite Wear OS 7’s efficiency improvements and larger batteries could stem from power draws like the brighter 5,000-nit display, lower processor efficiency, or simply outdated marketing specs.
Samsung officially announced the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 at its latest Unpacked event, introducing a major silicon pivot to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite SoC alongside a massive 800mAh battery cell. Curiously, despite the larger battery and newer chip, Samsung’s official spec sheet quotes the exact same “up to 60 hours with Always-On Display” runtime as the original 590mAh Exynos W1000-totting Galaxy Watch Ultra.
Galaxy Watch Ultra battery specifications Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 battery specifications
The spec discrepancy was first highlighted by Phonefuturist on X, who questioned whether the Snapdragon Wear Elite is better than the Exynos W1000, given that it seemingly erased a 35% battery capacity jump.
In Samsung and Qualcomm’s defense, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 does have a few other changes that could be gnawing at this larger battery. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 features a Super AMOLED display that reaches 5,000 nits, up from 3,000 nits on the Galaxy Watch Ultra. However, note that this peak brightness applies only to a small part of the display for a small duration. All the display pixels will not reach 5,000 nits simultaneously, nor will this peak be sustained for long on individual pixels.
The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 also has a slightly higher resolution of 498 x 498 pixels, compared to the Watch Ultra’s 480 x 480, but this is a small difference that doesn’t explain how such a large battery capacity difference yields practically no improvement in battery life.
Looking at the rest of the lineup, we notice similar trends. The Galaxy Watch 8 has a battery capacity of 325mAh and 435mAh for its 40mm and 44mm sizes, respectively, which the Galaxy Watch 9 bumped up to 390mAh and 445mAh, respectively. The bump is small, but Samsung continues to advertise up to 40 hours of usage without Always On Display functionality on all four models.
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