Samsung’s Tizen is the second-best operating system for smartwatches right now. However, the South Korean firm appears to be planning to ditch Tizen in favor of Google’s Wear OS, at least according to the latest rumors. The rumors first appeared back in 2018 when the company replaced Gear branding with Galaxy for its smartwatches. Now, another report seems to confirm Samsung’s shift from Tizen to Wear OS for its next-generation smartwatches.
An APK teardown of the latest version of the Galaxy Wearable app by Android Police’s Max Weinbach reveals two codenames: Fresh and Wise. These codenames are connected to Samsung’s next-generation smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch Active 4. They will reportedly come in two sizes—40/41mm and 44/45mm—and two variants: Bluetooth and cellular.
A new plugin with the codename ‘water’ was also found in the APK file, and it is reportedly Samsung’s compatibility layer for Wear OS. A reference to ‘newos’ was also found in the Galaxy Wearable application file. All of this points towards Samsung preparing to launch the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch Active 4 smartwatches running Google’s Wear OS. The upcoming watches are expected to be launched sometime in Q2 2021.
We are not entirely sure as to why Samsung would switch from Tizen to Wear OS even though the former is generally a more polished platform. Perhaps, this switch is a part of Samsung’s deepening partnership with Google and due to the lack of enough third-party apps and services for Tizen. Samsung is quite optimistic about the wearable market, especially after its growth last year, so it could be willing to ditch Tizen for even better growth.
Earlier, it was also found that Samsung is also working on the Galaxy Buds 2, which could replace the original Galaxy Buds and the Galaxy Buds+ later this year.
