Google, Samsung Announce Merger Of Wear OS And Tizen Smartwatch Platforms

The Google and Samsung partnership stretches back many years across numerous projects. However, it is finally coming to a head with this new wearable OS unification across new devices from both companies. This partnership aims to improve performance, battery life, and the developer community across devices.
This partnership will also bring Google services, such as Maps and Google Play, to next-generation Samsung smartwatches. Furthermore, with Google’s acquisition of Fitbit, we will begin to see world-class health tracking and information from both Google and Samsung smartwatches in the future. Samsung’s Janghyun Yoon explains that the hope is to “elevate how users’ approach to their wellbeing and enable them to make positive changes in their everyday lives.”
Sadly, it seems that these changes and updates will not be retroactive as Samsung reports that Tizen OS-based Galaxy smartwatches will only receive three years of support post-product launch. This means that the clock is ticking for the original, nearly three-year-old Galaxy Watch, and customers will have to upgrade their hardware if they want to use the Google ecosystem on a smartwatch.

Either way, it is exciting to see these changes come to future Samsung and Google products to make the ecosystem better than it was before. Hopefully, we will get some product announcements soon so we can take a look at this tech for ourselves, so stay tuned to HotHardware for updates.