Samsung's Strong Push into Health and Wearables is the Star of its Annual Foldables Update
Samsung’s annual foldables update turned into a Wearables and digital health show, with solid iterative updates to the Flip6, Fold6, Buds, and Buds Pro and big news in watches, rings, and health measurement. Techsponential has (or will soon have) review units of all the new Samsung products being announced today, so this report focuses on market analysis, not product performance.
Galaxy Ring
Of all the products that Samsung announced or teased at Galaxy Unpacked earlier this year in San Jose, CA, the Galaxy Ring got the most attention. My hands-on with it after a briefing went somewhat viral, generating articles in the tech press and then articles about the articles. There are several reasons why a smart ring makes sense:
From a technical perspective, your finger is a better place to gather some types of data than your wrist.
From a style perspective, a ring is much less intrusive visually and stylistically than a watch – especially since Samsung did a great job with the Galaxy Ring’s slightly concave design and choice of matte or glossy finishes.
From a wearability perspective, the ring shines compared to watches that are bulky, hard to sleep with, and require recharging as often as once a day. The Galaxy Ring’s battery should last up to seven days; many smartwatches require charging after twenty hours of use. Unless you remove your watch mid-day for recharging, you may not be able to do sleep tracking with it at all.
The Galaxy Ring can track movement, skin temperature, and heart rate, but the real purchase driver is going to be sleep tracking. Smart rings have been around for most of the last decade, but it’s only been in the last few years that sleep management has become a focus in the popular imagination. We are datafying and gamifying sleep. When people get eight hours of sleep and get a high sleep score – whether determined by their smart watch, their smart mattress, their CPAP, or their spouse – they brag about it the next day. If you know you’ve had poor sleep, you may make lifestyle changes like cutting out afternoon caffeine or going to bed earlier the next night.
There are other smart rings on the market, but they come from companies most consumers have never heard of, and some require ongoing subscriptions. Samsung is, well, Samsung. Ubiquitous retail distribution is a given, and at least one carrier – Verizon – has already announced that it will be selling the Galaxy Ring as well.
Perhaps more importantly, the Galaxy Ring fits into Samsung’s digital health and device ecosystem. Rings play nicely with smartwatches – owning both is better than owning either one alone. In fact, if you have both a Galaxy Ring and a Galaxy Watch, the Ring will automatically turn off some duplicate sensors to extend the Galaxy Ring’s battery life by up to 30%. Samsung Health combines the data from both the Galaxy Ring and the Galaxy Watch and uses it to determine an overall Energy Score. It will also use AI to provide recommendations based on the data to improve your score going forward.
There are only two potential concerns with the Galaxy Ring at launch: a relatively high $400 price point, and the lack of iOS support. The price will limit impulse purchases, but there is no subscription beyond the initial cost, and the materials, technology, and integration with Samsung’s ecosystem justify a premium. The lack of iOS support is a shame; as long as Apple doesn’t have an Apple Ring (it wouldn’t be called an iRing in today’s naming convention), this is Samsung’s best chance of slowly drawing people out of the Apple ecosystem.
Galaxy Watch7
The Galaxy Watch7 comes in two sizes (as before), has a great user interface (as before), runs Google WearOS apps (as before, at least recently), and now has a faster, more efficient Samsung Exynos 3nm chipset. However, the health tracking capabilites are greatly expanded. If you wear the Galaxy Watch7 to sleep, Samsung is the first smartwatch to be granted FDA approval for obstructive sleep apnea detection. Sleep apnea is when a person briefly stops breathing multiple times a night. It’s an extremely dangerous condition, but many people have no way to know that they have it, and others suspect that they might have it but need some data to give them a nudge to see a doctor. Samsung is going to save so many lives with this.
Samsung is also the first with new sensors that track AGEs (advanced glycation end products). This is not full blood sugar tracking — required for managing diabetes — but it is as close as we’ve gotten on a consumer smartwatch. The Galaxy Watch7 also does all the things Samsung’s smartwatches did in the past, including regulator-approved single point ECG, blood oxygen saturation (a temporary advantage over Apple due to IP infringement), and more. It’s a great watch for Android users.
Galaxy Watch7 Ultra
At first glance this certainly looks like Samsung is copying Apple, and while I wish Samsung had chosen a different strap design and used yellow as an accent color instead of orange …why not? Apple advertises the Apple Watch Ultra for scuba diving and mountain climbing and people buy it for the larger display and multi-day battery life. Samsung is advertising the Galaxy Watch7 Ultra for marathons and mountain climbing and people are going to buy it for the larger display and multi-day battery life. They may also like the design: the case is a squircle (circle inside a rounded off square) and looks like a Panerai and Bell & Ross got together and had a digital baby. (In a good way.) I like the design and it looks great on my large wrist. If you get past the press photos with the ribbed orange band, the Galaxy Watch7 Ultra looks nothing like is an Apple Watch Ultra. It has all the health features listed above. It’s going to be a hit.
Galaxy Z Fold6
Samsung’s flagship fold-larger smartphone bridges the gap between phones and tablets, and Samsung notes that purchasers over-index on productivity and gaming, using their Fold to get more done and play role-playing games on the larger display. The fold-larger market segment has limited competition in the U.S. – Google’s Pixel Fold is more passport-sized, is significantly heavier, and overheats – and it costs nearly the same. OnePlus’ Open has a wider front display and superb camera, but it isn’t sold at U.S. carriers – or financed and subsized by them on your wireless bill -- so it might as well not exist for average consumers.
The Galaxy Z Fold6 has slightly different dimensions, better internal cooling, and Qualcomm’s highest-performing smartphone silicon – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Samsung. It is more durable than before, and Samsung backs that up with a warranty that includes a free screen replacement if needed. The Galaxy Z Fold6 also gets all of Samsung and most of Google’s latest AI features, which have proven popular and driven sales of the Galaxy S24. There are some new Galaxy AI features that are particularly useful on the larger internal display, including generative AI drawing and meeting summaries in Samsung Notes. Samsung is supporting both new foldables with seven years of OS and security updates — this is both wonderful for sustainability, and it continues to be a reason to buy from Samsung in Asian and European markets where Chinese vendors are making inroads.
Samsung didn’t change the formula much with the Galaxy Z Fold6 – the front display is still narrower than a typical smartphone – and the new hardware and software are not major departures. At $1900 I expect that the Galaxy Z Fold6 will sell fine in subsidized markets like the U.S., but it is unlikely to spur early upgrades or bring large numbers of new users to the form factor.
Galaxy Z Flip6
The typical buyer of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip is focused on creativity, not productivity, and Samsung gives this group plenty of fun customization opportunities with AI-powered wallpaper on the Galaxy Z Flip6’s external display. Samsung has shored up the Galaxy Z Flip6 with new Qualcomm silicon and, crucially, better cameras. It is also the first Samsung vertical foldable to feature a vapor cooling chamber – impressive, given the form factor – and is slightly thinner than before. However, unless you stack the Galaxy Z Flip5 next to the Flip6, you’re unlikely to notice much dimensional change. What you will notice is better battery life: Samsung stuffed a larger 4000mAh battery into the smaller enclosure, and the new Snapdragon chipset is more efficient than before as well. It’s a good combination.
The Galaxy Z Flip is Samsung’s best-selling foldable, but it has plenty of competition globally, including the U.S., where Motorola’s RAZR and RAZR+ have similar functionality at $100 - $400 less. Given the iterative nature of the $1100 Galaxy Z Flip6, I expect that it will sell well to Samsung fans and continue to over-index pulling in iPhone users. Motorola will remain the king of budget foldables, at least in the U.S. — China is a completely different market.
Galaxy Buds3 / Galaxy Buds3 Pro
Earbuds are a huge part of consumers’ personal device ecosystems and clear profit drivers for those who do them well. Samsung has redesigned the Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Buds Pro with stems, better audio quality, and improved adaptive ANC. There is some technical detail behind the improved audio claim — Samsung is using a separate woofer and planar magnetic tweeter in the Galaxy Buds3 Pro — but I haven’t had a chance to listen to my review sample yet. Samsung claims that it used data to make these the best-fitting earbuds on the market; my ears preferred the old design, but it is entirely possible that my ears are not representative. Samsung did not make any claims about spatial audio, a big feature for some of its premium competition.
XR?
Samsung had Google onstage multiple times at Unpacked but neither company discussed their joint effort with Qualcomm in XR/spatial computing. It seems unlikely that we will get a major update on the upcoming OS and headset this year, though if we do, it will likely be at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in October.