Samsung announced the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 on July 22, 2026, at its Galaxy Unpacked event, alongside several other devices including the Galaxy Watch9, Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8, and Galaxy Z Flip8 (Engadget, Samsung Newsroom).

The new watch is 12 percent thinner than the first Galaxy Watch Ultra. Samsung says it managed this by rearranging the parts inside the watch, not by making the battery smaller. The battery actually got bigger, growing from 590mAh to 800mAh, which is about a 36 percent increase. Samsung says that should give the watch 60 hours of use with the screen set to always stay on.

The watch has a 47mm case made of titanium, a strong but lightweight metal. It has an IP69K rating, which means no dust can get inside and it can survive high-pressure, high-temperature water jets. It is also rated for water resistance to 100 meters, or about 328 feet. Samsung tested this in salt water and chlorinated pool water. The watch also earned a certification called EN13319, which is the European standard for devices used in recreational diving. The watch can track your depth, time underwater, and water temperature. A separate diving app coming later this year will add information about how fast you are going up or down and what your safe limits are.

The screen is a 1.52-inch Super AMOLED display, which is the same type of bright, colorful screen Samsung uses in its phones. The watch has 64GB of storage and 2GB of memory. It runs on a processor called the Snapdragon Wear Elite Platform, which also powers artificial intelligence features Samsung is adding to the watch. Samsung hinted at this AI focus the week before the event with a blog post titled "Coming Soon: A New AI-Powered Health Companion on Your Wrist," and the event invitation, sent July 8, carried the tagline "A New Shape Unfolds" (Samsung Newsroom).

You can pre-order the watch now in the US in Titanium Silver or Titanium Gray for $700. It goes on sale August 7 (Engadget).

What makes this interesting is how Samsung managed to make a tough watch thinner while also giving it a bigger battery. That is a difficult balance because a rugged watch already needs thick walls and strong parts. Making it 12 percent slimmer while growing the battery by about a third means the internal layout, heat management, and the way parts are stacked together all had to change. Samsung's explanation that it re-engineered the internal components is vague, but the result is clear: a larger battery in a thinner watch.

The diving certification puts the Ultra 2 in a category that most smartwatches do not seriously enter. EN13319 is a real technical standard, not just a marketing label. The planned diving app, with its calculations for safe ascent and descent speeds, suggests Samsung wants this device to serve as a genuine backup tool for divers. Whether people who dive will trust a smartwatch enough to rely on it underwater is a different question, and one that will take time and outside testing to answer.

The processor is the other piece to watch. Qualcomm, the company that makes wearable chips, has historically been a limiting factor in what Android smartwatches can do, especially when it comes to screen efficiency and running AI directly on the device. Samsung's focus on AI features powered by the new chip suggests the Ultra 2 will handle more processing on the watch itself instead of depending on your phone. The bigger battery and the 60-hour claim with the screen always on will be the real test of whether this chip is genuinely more efficient or just uses more power.

At $700, the Ultra 2 costs the same as the first version and far more than most Android smartwatches. What you are paying for is the titanium body, the diving certification, the larger battery, and whatever AI features Samsung delivers. The August 7 sale date gives Samsung about two weeks of pre-orders before the watch reaches store shelves.