New information has emerged online that suggests Samsung is building a smartwatch that runs a version of Google’s Wear OS instead of the Korean company’s Tizen OS.
In May we reported on a tweet from notable electronics leaker Evan Blass. The tweet claimed some Samsung employees had been seen around the factory wearing Samsung watches that were running Wear OS.
Following that, however, Blass clarified that those watches were actually just “one-offs” that were made by Google and sent to some Samsung workers.
Update: turns out these were actually just one-offs made by Google and seeded to some Samsung workers (i.e. keep moving, nothing to see here).
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) June 7, 2018
It seemed as if the Samsung Wear OS hype was nothing more than a dream — until another leaker, who goes by the handle Ice Universe, stated today that the company is, in fact, working on a new watch with Galaxy branding.
The tweet suggests that the watch is a version of the Samsung Gear S4, but instead of running Tizen, it runs Wear OS. To be clear, the tweet says the watch will be based on Android Wear, which is the old name for Wear OS but, more important is the wording “Based on.” It will be very interesting to see if the company layers a skin on top of Wear OS the same way it does with regular Android.
About Gear S4 (probably called Galaxy Watch) Based on Android Wear, 470mAh battery, PLP package, it is expected to have new UX interaction and blood pressure measurement.
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) July 6, 2018
According to 9to5Google, the new watch will have a “new UX interaction” and there’s a chance that the watch could sport a rotating bezel that would function similarly to Apple’s Digital Crown.
Source: Twitter, 9to5Google
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