Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 might skip Snapdragon Wear Elite in some regions

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra ($649 on Amazon) was launched in July 2024, and only got a minor spec bump in 2025. Two years later, the flagship smartwatch is finally set to receive a true successor. However, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 could be far less interesting in Europe than in the USA. This is because GalaxyClub has already been able to locate beta firmware for the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 on Samsung's servers.

This confirms that the smartwatch has the model number SM-L716 in the USA, but the model number SM-L715F in Europe. Samsung model numbers ending with a "5" usually indicate an LTE modem, while a "6" indicates a 5G modem. This indicates that the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 in the USA will be equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite with an integrated 5G modem, while in Europe it will continue to be equipped with the Samsung Exynos W1000 with 4G modem.

The two chips are based on a similar CPU configuration with an ARM Cortex-A78 performance core and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores, but the Snapdragon Wear Elite achieves significantly higher clock frequencies and offers support for more modern features such as Wi-Fi 6 and ultra-wideband (UWB). Qualcomm also advertises advantages in terms of power consumption and GPU performance. If Samsung does indeed launch the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 in Europe with the older Exynos W1000, it is likely to be a rather modest upgrade compared to the previous model.