First concrete clues emerge about a new Samsung Galaxy Watch or Galaxy Watch Active running Wear OS

Last month, Ice Universe stated that Samsung would release a smartwatch running Wear OS in 2021, an audacious claim considering that the South Korean company has a mature smartwatch OS of its own in Tizen. However, XDA Developers has discovered that the well-known leaker may be onto something, although it is early days yet.

According to the website, One UI 3.1 kernel source code contains references to something codenamed Merlot. Apparently, Merlot has a Broadcom BCM43013 chip that supports up to Bluetooth 5.0 and 802.11n Wi-Fi. Additionally, Merlot runs Wear OS, which Google is due to upgrade to Android 11 this year.

It remains to be seen what Merlot actually is, but there is a chance that it could be the SM-R86X and SM-R87X that GalaxyClub mentioned last month. Those two model numbers should correspond to one device if the Galaxy Watch 3 is anything to go by (SM-R84x & SM-R85x). It is unclear if SM-R86X and SM-R87X are a new Galaxy Watch or a new Galaxy Watch Active, but we should hear more about them in the coming months.

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