New Samsung Galaxy Watch revealed in pre-release leak

A few months ago, Roland Quandt alleged that Samsung was not only preparing a new version of the Galaxy Watch4, but also another Galaxy Tab S6 Lite to be sold as the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024). While Samsung has now released the latter with an Exynos 1280 chipset upgrade, there has been no official sign of the former. However, it seems that the Galaxy Watch4 (2024) could come to market under a different name entirely.

According to Android Headlines, it has found evidence of Samsung having developed the 'Galaxy Watch FE', with FE meaning 'Fan Edition' in this context. For reference, this would see the company expand its FE series to smartwatches for the first time, having already fleshed out the series to include earbuds and tablets rather than just smartphones. Incidentally, Samsung is expected to deliver a follow-up to the Galaxy S23 FE (curr. $549.99 on Amazon) too, appropriately dubbed the Galaxy S24 FE.

As the screenshot below shows, Android Headlines has spotted three model numbers, all with SM-R866 as their root. Based on other Samsung Galaxy releases, SM-R866F, SM-R866N, and SM-R866U relate to global, South Korean and US regional variants rather than distinct devices. Although the model numbers do not mean anything by themselves, they are closely related to 'SM-R86x', the root model number for the 40 mm version of the Galaxy Watch4. For context, Samsung offers Wi-Fi variants as the SM-R860 and LTE alternatives as SM-R865. 

Thus, it appears that SM-R866 is a re-worked Galaxy Watch4 40 mm and not any other Galaxy Watch4 series member. With that being said, there is nothing to suggest that Samsung has not prepared other Galaxy Watch FE variants too with model numbers like SM-R876, SM-S886 or SM-R896, respectively. Unfortunately, other details are unknown for now, including how Samsung will distinguish the Galaxy Watch FE from existing Galaxy Watch4 smartwatches.