A Galaxy Watch 5 Pro owner has posted images on Reddit showing burns and blisters on their arm, which they say appeared after they slept while wearing the device. The post was first picked up by Android Authority.
According to the user, the watch was charged to full before bed and worn from the moment they went to sleep. By the time they woke, the battery had run down completely. They also said the watch would not power on after the incident.
Skin redness and irritation from smartwatches are not unusual, and such cases are typically classed as contact dermatitis. Blisters, however, are a new development in reports of this kind.
The drained battery may point to the watch having been unusually active overnight, using up its 590mAh cell. When a lithium-ion battery empties itself over just a few hours, it can give off a considerable amount of heat, so a burn of this severity is not out of the question.
Reports like this have surfaced before. Samsung's Galaxy Watch lineup has, for the most part, a consistent safety record, and 9to5Google said its own years of testing have never produced overheating that left visible marks on skin. Even so, battery problems are not especially rare, and they have also affected the Galaxy Ring.
Users have previously reported suspected overheating on the Galaxy Watch Ultra, Watch Ultra 2, Galaxy Watch 8 and several other models. None of those accounts appear to have involved harm as serious as the latest Watch 5 Pro case. Some of the older posts could plausibly be explained as contact dermatitis, but 9to5Google noted that this report is more convincing, given the visible fluid-filled blisters.
