Evan Blass: Samsung to stick with its Tizen OS for its Gear smartwatches

After posting last month that Samsung employees had been seen wearing the company's Galaxy Gear smartwatches running Google's Wear OS, Evan Blass has walked back any suggestion that Samsung will indeed switch from its own Tizen OS. According to Blass, while it is true that Samsung employees were indeed running Google's smartwatch OS on their devices, it was just a one-off experiment to no apparent end.

Although Samsung has been the preeminent maker of Google's Android-based smartphones, the company has taken its own tact when it comes to the operating system running on its smartwatches. Although initially developed in conjunction with Intel for potential use on smartphones as an Android alternative, Samsung has by and large kept the Tizen OS project alive on its wearables. Like smartwatches powered by Google's Android-based Wear OS, Samsung's Tizen OS smartwatches also work with Apple's iPhones via an iOS app.

Samsung is expected to release a sequel to the Galaxy Gear Sport and Gear S3 series sometime this year. It is likely to feature Qualcomm's next-generation, but yet to be officially announced, mobile chipset also due this year. Samsung's Tizen OS is currently on version 3.0, but version 4.0 has been in testing for several months, which we expect will debut when Samsung launches its next generation of wearables.

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