News

Facebook Is Working On A Smartwatch With Messaging & Health-Tracking Capabilities

Published

5 years ago

February 16, 2021

As part of its ongoing quest to dominate our lives, Facebook is working on a smartwatch with messaging and health-tracking capabilities, informed The Information on Friday.

The smartwatch will reportedly run on the Android operating system, but it’s unclear whether if Facebook decides to use the established Wear OS platform or release the smartwatch with its own flavor of Android.

In any case, Facebook’s smartwatch will focus heavily on messaging and health-tracking, presumably featuring lightweight versions of the social network’s family of services, including not only Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp.

Because the smartwatch will have a built-in eSIM card, it won’t have to be tethered to a smartphone to access the internet, a feature that’s guaranteed to appeal to all fitness users, especially if it delivers integrations with products from companies like Peloton.

The release of the Facebook smartwatch won’t be the company’s first push into other market segments. For example, Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets are among the most popular products of their kind, boasting a thriving ecosystem that’s home to some of the most innovative virtual reality experiences currently available.

As such, the biggest obstacle standing in Facebook’s way to success likely won’t be its ability to create an attractive product but its poor reputation among consumers and regulators, neither of which might not be thrilled by the idea of the company having access to users’ health data 24×7.

Also Read: Apple Likely To Release 8K VR Headset In 2022

Of course, Portal, a standalone video chat device released by Facebook that sparked similar privacy concerns, is still selling well, so it seems that many consumers are still willing to sacrifice their privacy if it means getting their hands on an attractive product.

While the first generation of the Facebook smartwatch will probably play it safe, future generations could benefit from Facebook’s acquisition of the neural interface startup CTRL-Labs in 2019, which specializes in building wireless input mechanisms.

News

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 9 And Ultra 2 Specs Leak Ahead Of Unpacked

An 800mAh Ultra 2 battery and a switch from Exynos to Qualcomm silicon headline the expected changes for Samsung’s next smartwatches.

Published

4 days ago

July 15, 2026

Nour Nasir

samsung's galaxy watch 9 and ultra 2 specs leak ahead of unpacked

Samsung’s next smartwatches have little left to hide. A new leak reported by Android Authority has surfaced most of the remaining details about the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, just over a week before the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22.

The biggest change is an invisible one: Samsung is expected to drop its own Exynos W1000 chip in favor of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite SW6100, a chipset unveiled only this year, according to the outlet.

Battery capacity looks like the other notable upgrade. Citing a report from Winfuture, Android Authority says the Watch Ultra 2 could reach 800mAh, well beyond the 590mAh cell in the current Watch Ultra. The 44mm Watch 9 reportedly gets a 445mAh cell — the same capacity as last year’s Watch 8 Classic — while the 40mm model stays at 325mAh.

The 40mm Watch 9 will reportedly feature a 438 x 438-pixel panel, with the 44mm Watch 9 and the Watch Ultra 2 sharing a larger 480 x 480-pixel screen. Samsung leaker Ice Universe has separately claimed the Ultra 2’s display could reach a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. RAM and storage vary by model, topping out at 2GB and 64GB.

Also Read: Tamper With The Recording LED & Meta’s Glasses Kill Camera

The Ultra 2 keeps its titanium case and 100-meter water resistance; the standard Watch 9 remains aluminum, rated to 5 ATM. All models are said to include Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, and dual-band WiFi, with the usual LTE variants, and ship with One UI 9 Watch running on Wear OS 7.

A separate leak puts the Galaxy Watch 9 at €409 (about $468) for the 40mm Bluetooth model, rising to €489 (about $560) for the 44mm LTE version, with the Watch Ultra 2 LTE at €749 (about $857) — figures Android Authority said were partially corroborated by Winfuture. Confirmation arrives on stage on July 22.