More screen, less wasted space
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch series has brought us some of the best Android smartwatches around, and over the past few iterations the tech giant has focused on refining the user experience. It continues to focus on health-oriented services, having recently partnered with Peloton to allow Galaxy Watches with Wear OS to pair with its workout machines. Despite Samsung’s continued improvement on the software side of things, the Galaxy Watch 5 ended up looking almost identical to the prior generation. That may change with the Galaxy Watch 6, as rumors point to the device having a larger display, but smaller bezels.
Prolific Samsung leaker Ice Universe claims that Samsung will be increasing the size of the Galaxy Watch 6’s dial to 1.47 inches, while also bumping up its resolution (via 9to5Google). Comparatively, the Galaxy Watch 5 (44mm) sported a 1.4-inch display. So far we’ve yet to hear anything about what that sort of change might look like for the Watch 6’s presumptive 40mm counterpart.
The South Korean company’s aim to increase the display size of its watches while reducing the prominence of its bezels would follow the trend we’ve seen towards maximizing screen space on phones. It’s been making progress there ever since the release of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in 2017, but its watches never seemed to catch up.
We have some tweaks in recent years, like the move away from rotating bezels, but this change could be one of the biggest yet — no pun intended. While a larger, higher-res display sounds great from a usability perspective, we are slightly concerned about the impact it may have on battery life.
Diminishing bezel size is already a trend elsewhere in the smartwatch world: Apple had previously shrunk them in the Apple Watch Series 7 line. The company increased the size of its displays by nearly 20%, while shrinking the bezels a whopping 40%.
Samsung has yet to officially reveal anything about the Galaxy Watch 6, though it will likely unveil the new smartwatch later this year at an upcoming Unpacked event.
