Unless Samsung has seen something big, this sounds like an odd move.
Cast your mind back to 2014: Wear OS was still Android Wear and the Apple Watch, or the iWatch as it was being called, was still roughly a year away from being officially unveiled. The Samsung Gear Live was one of the two launch devices that represented Google’s ambitions to live on our wrists. Just six months later, Samsung pushed out the Gear S that ran on the company’s own Tizen software rather than Wear OS. There might have been a sense that Samsung was hedging its bets and backing two horses to see which of the two took off. The fact we didn’t see another Samsung Wear OS smartwatch after the Gear Live speaks volumes though. Fast forward to 2021 and we are still having a lot of the same gripes about Google’s Wear OS, while Tizen has found itself packed into some of the best smartwatches you can put on your wrist right now. That’s why talk of Samsung potentially swapping Tizen for Wear OS fueled by Samsung insider Ice Universe’s recent Twitter post doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. In its current state, it’s a struggle to see what Wear OS is actually doing more impressive things and for the features that are working better, it’s taken much longer for Google to get them to a point where they feel enjoyable and unproblematic to use. On the flip side, Samsung has just launched two of its best smartwatches in the Galaxy Watch 3 and the Galaxy Watch Active 2 and a big part of why they’re the best and most reviews say it’s the best smartwatch option for Android users, is that Tizen is a currently a much better fit for the wrist. I’ve tried to look at what Samsung could gain from Wear over Tizen and it’s hard to see what there is right now. Samsung’s software is easier to use, for starters. It’s well optimized for smartwatches and crucially, it’s done a much better job of bringing improvements and enhancements to its own platform. Even stretching back to older models.
