The special feature of Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 3 is to be a pet activity tracker

Alongside the Galaxy Tab S12 Plus and Tab S12 Ultra, Samsung today announced its latest tracker in the Galaxy SmartTag 3. It offers a longer range and new cross-platform support, but perhaps its biggest improvement is that it can also be a lightweight activity tracker for pets.

Starting at $30 for a single device or $100 for a four-pack, there’s no major change to the exterior of the Galaxy SmartTag 3. It still has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance and Samsung says it’s about 35% more compact and 33% lighter than its predecessor, but it’s hard to tell without holding the new one and its predecessor side by side.

Instead, the most impactful changes come on the inside, where the SmartTag 3 offers improved battery life of up to 550 days in normal mode (up from 500 days) or 790 days in power saving mode (up from 700 days). Perhaps more importantly, Samsung’s latest tracker has a longer range thanks to support for Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding, which allows the SmartTag 3 to provide distance and direction guidance up to 60 meters (196 feet), which the company says is about three times farther than before. Then, as you get closer, you can use the tag’s ultra-wideband support to find what it’s attached to with even more precision. On top of that, Samsung has added a new Location Notification feature, which lets you set a geofence around a particular location, allowing the tracker to send an alert when it enters or leaves the area.

Meanwhile, to make the SmartTag 3 easier to use, for the first time, Samsung’s tracker is cross-platform compatible via the SmartThings app. This means that whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, you can still use and locate objects with the SmartTag 3.

Sam Rutherford for Woozad

However, for those with pets, the SmartTag 3’s most surprising new feature is that it can also double as an activity tracker. I wouldn’t really call it a fitness tracker, since it doesn’t measure things like heart rate or V02, but it does have the ability to record how much your pet moves, how long they’re active, and how much they sleep. There’s even a dedicated tab for tracking your pet’s stats in the SmartThings app, which makes it easy to see things like where your pet is if they’re out for a walk. You will just have to find yourself a collar with a spot of the right size for the SmartTag 3.

The Galaxy SmartTag 3 will be available in two colors (black or white) from “early November”.