The successor to Samsung’s unannounced Galaxy Watch Active, the Galaxy Watch Active 2, will be the company’s first smartwatch with an ECG heart rate tracker.
However, the report said that the feature will not be available at the start of the watch, but will be updated after the first half of 2020. At the start of the game, this watch is expected to have a more basic heart rate tracking function, if your heart rate jumps too high or too low, it will give an alarm.
This is not the first time that Samsung smartwatches include heart rate tracking, but previous watches such as Galaxy Watch Active and Galaxy Watch included only low-precision optical trackers. In contrast, ECG trackers measure more accurate electrical signals and offer the possibility to detect health. However, ECG requires the FDA to approve equipment with this function. According to reports, this is why Samsung delayed the release of this feature.
Adding ECG support is exactly what Apple did for Apple Watch Series 4. The Apple Watch Series 4 was released in September last year, but it was not updated in the United States until December last year. It was subsequently updated in the UK in March this year. However, Apple said it had obtained FDA approval when it first released the watch.
It’s worth noting that FDA’s clearance is different from approval. Jon Speer, co-founder of medical equipment company quality management software development company Greenlight Guru, points out that FDA’s participation in a new project usually has three levels of indicators. The highest level is approval, which is only open to Class III products or technologies that are high risk but have high returns. Approval is the gold standard, and companies need to conduct a large number of tests to get this title.
Apple Watch can only be regarded as a Class II product. For Class I and Class II products, the FDA does not provide “approval” but only “licensing”. Class I and Class II products are usually low risk products, and obtaining a license is obviously much easier than obtaining approval. In most cases, some products require a license because they are very similar to FDA-regulated medical devices.
Therefore, Samsung’s desire to implement the ECG function deserves FDA approval. In addition, this unannounced watch looks more like a traditional upgrade to the Samsung smartwatch collection. It will be available in three different versions, one for the LTE version, one for the Bluetooth version, and one for the Under Armour brand, which will come with an exclusive strap and comes with 6 months of MapMyRun subscription service. According to SamMobile, the three phones will be available in 40mm and 44mm sizes and will run Samsung One UI 1.5.
According to Wareable, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 will be released with the Galaxy Note 10 at an event in New York next month. Samsung has scheduled the event on August 7.