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Picture this: you leave your phone on the kitchen counter and expect your watch to pick up the slack. It’s a neat image, but it may not be Samsung’s only plan for its next flagship wearable.
Evidence from Dutch site GalaxyClub suggests Samsung will add a Bluetooth-and-Wi‑Fi-only version of the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 for the Netherlands and likely the wider EU. That’s a shift — Samsung skipped a Bluetooth-only Ultra in previous generations, offering cellular-first models instead.
The budget move beneath the glossy name
Reports also link the Ultra 2 to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite, a chipset that can support 5G. Yet Samsung appears poised to ship a variant without a cellular modem. Why? Simple math. Memory and storage costs have crept up, nudging phone prices higher, and a 5G radio adds complexity and cost to a watch. Dropping the modem buys Samsung room to offer a lower-priced Ultra while still using the newer silicon.
Some context: the original Galaxy Watch Ultra used Samsung’s Exynos W1000 and only supported 4G, and even Qualcomm’s Wear W5 Gen 2 wearables arrived without 5G. Smartwatch memory has also changed quickly — the first Ultra had 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and a later refresh doubled storage to 64GB. Whether Ultra 2 follows that path remains to be seen.
Expect the Bluetooth model to arrive in Europe first and then likely expand globally as Samsung looks to widen the Ultra’s appeal without pushing prices up.
One more note: today, Apple remains the only major company shipping watches with true 5G connectivity. Samsung’s push to offer a no‑cellular Ultra 2 would be a pragmatic response to market realities rather than a technological retreat.
If you’re tracking this device, watch for official specs on RAM and storage, a formal announcement around availability, and the regional SKUs Samsung chooses to support — those details will reveal whether this is a limited regional experiment or the start of a broader strategy.
Source: gsmarena
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