Samsung rumored to have Gear Sport smartwatch successor in the pipeline

According to SamMobile, Samsung is reportedly working on a follow-up to 2017’s Samsung Gear Sport smartwatch. Allegedly, the smartwatch’s internal codename is “Pulse” and it features the model number SM-R500.

The Samsung Gear Sport is a fitness-centric smartwatch, acting as kind of a hybrid of the Samsung Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier. However, Samsung is doing away with the “Gear” branding, so it’s highly unlikely this Gear Sport follow-up will be called the Gear Sport 2 or have much relation to the previous Gear smartwatches.

Instead, it’s far more likely this new Pulse smartwatch will be a sportier, fitness-centric version of the highly-rated Samsung Galaxy Watch, which launched alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in August. It’s possible the model could be called the Samsung Galaxy Sport (which would make sense), but that’s just a guess at this point.

It’s also relatively certain the new Pulse smartwatch will run Samsung’s proprietary Tizen software instead of something Like Google’s Wear OS. There were rumors the Galaxy Watch might come with Wear OS, but that didn’t come to pass, so it would be quite surprising if Samsung did so with this new watch.

Since the Galaxy Watch launched with the Galaxy Note 9, it’s reasonable to guess that this watch will launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy S10, which we expect to see towards the end of February 2019. However, Samsung is expected to launch three variants of the Galaxy S10 so it might launch this watch on its own to avoid an over-crowded launch event. We’ll have to wait and see.

Are you excited about a sportier (and maybe cheaper) version of the Samsung Galaxy Watch? Let us know in the comments if this device is on your watch list!

NEXT: Samsung Galaxy Watch review — the smartwatch that tries to do it all