Samsung’s wearables have been one of the company’s many boons when it comes to software and functionality. If you’ve been following the wearables market, Samsung’s Tizen OS has quickly become one of the more functionally stable operating systems in the market. However, there’s always been a looming cloud over Tizen as Samsung’s own Galaxy devices come equipped with Google’s Android OS.
Twitter user and prolific leaker, @UniverseIce tweeted on Friday that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Watch would be replacing its well thought out Tizen OS with Google’s Wear OS. If true, the switch would seem to benefit Google’s floundering Wear OS more than Samsung’s Galaxy Wearables lineup. It would also make Samsung one of the biggest names behind the OS aside from FOSSIL, Casio, and Skagen.
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch series has seen much success in previous years thanks to its design and impressively thought-out software. This change seems to be rather uncharacteristic for Samsung given the popularity of the devices and also the company’s recent thrust for its SmartThings platform. That said, Samsung’s move to embrace Google’s services isn’t anything new. We’ve seen it in recent years with Bixby slowly taking a backseat to Google Assistant in the company’s OneUI.
That said, Samsung could very well be looking at offering a whole new series of smartwatches built for Wear OS. The other possibility is the company introducing a Wear OS version of the upcoming Galaxy Watch. This would bolster the number of the devices in Samsung’s Galaxy Ecosystem and create a new offering for those who have shied away from Samsung’s wearables for so long.
While highly unlikely, this could be an indication that Wear OS has finally reached a point where Samsung is comfortable putting it on their devices. There have been many limitations when it came to both Tizen and Wear OS. However, the former has consistently been able to keep up with new features and better customizability.