Ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event on July 10, the company has offered an early look at what we can expect from the BioActive health sensor on the next generation of Galaxy smartwatches. It is a single chip that combines several fitness and health-monitoring sensors, including the optical heart rate monitor, electrical heart signal tracking, and bioelectric impedance analysis.

Samsung engineers focused on three upgrades to the new sensor: enhancing the performance of light-receiving photodiodes, adding additional colours of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and arranging them optimally across the sensor. The company has said that it has more than doubled the performance of each photodiode, thereby decreasing the number needed to maintain capacity from eight to four. This redesign freed up additional space for the integration of a larger number and variety of LEDs.

The new sensor now includes blue, yellow, violet and ultraviolet LEDs in addition to an increased number of green, red and infrared LEDs. “With the integration and arrangement of these LEDs, photodiodes and specially designed photodiode, Samsung is taking innovation one step further and is now able to pursue unexplored aspects of health monitoring on wearables,” the company said.

The technology allows the new BioActive Sensor to more accurately measure health metrics such as heart rate, sleep quality, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and stress levels. Even the measurement of heart rate during intensive workouts is 30 per cent more accurate compared to its predecessor.

How to watch Galaxy Unpacked?

Like previous Galaxy Unpacked events, Samsung is live streaming Unpacked across multiple platforms. You can watch it on the Samsung website, the Samsung Community page, and YouTube. Tune in on July 10 at 6.30pm IST.