Big Tech lands an early win in legal battles against publishers
July 9, 2025
Samsung to launch a triple-folding phone this year
July 12, 2025
Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch8 smartwatch today at its Unpacked July 2025 event, along with the Galaxy Watch8 Classic version with a rotating bezel, which made a comeback after a year’s gap. Both watches have undergone a design overhaul and now resemble the Galaxy Watch Ultra, launched last year, which had a squarish case around a circular bezel.
The Galaxy Watch8 gets a screen upgrade with a brighter display that can have a peak brightness of 3,000 nits as compared to 2,000 nits on the Watch7. This allows you to use the smartwatch better in brighter conditions.
The Watch retains the Exynos W1000 chip and a BioActive Sensor, which measures heart rate, EKGs, and body composition analysis.
The smartwatch comes with other features Samsung rolled out last month, including Bedtime Guidance, which gives you suggestions for the best time for you to sleep based on previous sleep-tracking data; Vascular Load, which measures stress on your vascular system while you are sleeping and gives you lifestyle tweak suggestions; a Running Coach, which lays out the optimum pace for your runs; and Antioxidant index, which measures carotenoids — a type of antioxidant found in vegetables and fruits. Most of these features assume a lot of factors about a user’s health and use calculations to provide a score and suggestions, which might not be very useful in real life.
Both the watches run One UI 8 Watch based on Wear OS 6. With this software release, Google is making Gemini available on watches, so you can ask questions without typing. Gemini is integrated with Samsung Health, Calendar, Reminder, and Clock apps.
While Samsung is not making any changes to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, it is releasing a new Titanium Blue colorway at $650.
The Galaxy Watch8 starts at $350 for the Bluetooth model, $50 more than the previous-gen watch, and is $400 for the LTE model. The new Watch comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes in graphite and silver colors. The Galaxy Watch8 Classic is priced at $500 for the Bluetooth version and $550 for the LTE version, and it comes in a 46mm size.
Preorders for all the watches start today, and the devices will become generally available in the U.S. on July 25.
