https://9to5google.com/2024/05/31/samsung-sunsetting-tizen-smartwatch-os/
Samsung’s devices haven’t used the Tizen operating system since before the Galaxy Watch 4, when the company switched to using...
'Looks at perfectly functional Galaxy Watch 3 on my wrist'
This is a huge problem for Samsung. This is proof they cannot maintain an OS, making them further dependent on Google. They chose a Linux compatible toolkit (EFL from Enlightenment) and tried making their own OS. It was terrible and filled with security holes.
I think they should rebase Tizen on PostMarketOS, as I don't believe Samsung can create their own base.
Of course they can't. It's gotten so bad they ship their TVs with antivirus on them. The only reason anyone uses their Android phones is they have the best hardware, most of their add-on software is just useless gimmicks people turn off. Tizen on watches was never going to work. Apple has a large enough ecosystem to attract app developers. Google has a large enough ecosystem to attract app developers. Samsung does not. Smartest thing they could do now is shut down their remaining software development. Ship the TVs with vanilla Google OS like LG, strip the bloatware off their phones, etc. They would lose face but their products would become way better.
Doesn’t LG use WebOS?
Or at least they did three years ago when I wanted to buy a TV but everything was back ordered to he’ll…
My 2 LGs do use WebOS, but I never use it. I have a raspberry pi for one, and the other one is my laptops second screen, so everything is fed from the laptop. I never see the TV's OS
Smartest thing they could do now is shut down their remaining software development. Ship the TVs with vanilla Google OS
I think there's a difference between smartwatches and TVs in terms of being able to monetize the operating system. On the tiny screen of a watch you can't really put any advertisement (at least not without destroying the usability completely) and most of the things you can analyse are happening on the smartphone.
A TV on the other hand gives you a huge surface in the living room of a families home and if you have control of the OS there are plenty of ways to monetize it (and companies willing to pay for it). You can preinstall certain streaming apps (and get payed for it), promote newly released movies and give links to rent them (either your own shop or again for commission), you can collect userdata and sell that to other companies, and much more.
I think it's telling that monetizing the operating system is the immediate place one jumps to with this, rather than earning more profit by selling more products which are better for the consumer.
Yeah, sadly from a economic perspective it is kind of obvious how a continuous source of revenue might be more appealing compared to a one time purchase. Especially with a product like TVs that usually have a pretty long lifetime before being replaced.
Although i would point out that (at least in our current society) privacy and an ad-free experience in many ways is treated as a luxury good. Persumably a TV with a better OS would be sold at a higher price, and confronted with this choice many consumers would likely choose the cheaper one.
privacy as a luxury good
Sounds like what Apple is trying to do...
Sadly wanting privacy is kind of a niche thing, not a large # of people buying iPhones to avoid surveillance. And most TV buyers DGAF... If a large # of them opted out of content recognition we'd still have dumb TVs on the market.
Unfortunately I think without some kind of regulation that makes personal info a liability / hot potato, it will still be treated as an asset to be collected:(
Sounds like what Apple is trying to do...
Yeah, although sadly Apple isn't quite the good guy either. I feel like in a way instead of ads they use their walled garden approach to achieve a similar result.
They'll make it really annoying or even impossible to use alternatives and mix things. This way they you are by design drawn to use their desired solutions.
Does make for a better user experience as long as you pay the price and play by their rules. And probably also better for privacy, because with the closed system approach they don't need the data as much to target you.
But imo still problematic and Apple doesn't want to just sell good Hardware, but also services.
Unfortunately I think without some kind of regulation that makes personal info a liability / hot potato, it will still be treated as an asset to be collected:(
Agreed, this is one of those problems where it is much easier to legislate from the top down, rather than trying to get each individual consumer to make fully conscious decisions.
I used to develop smart TV apps, and Tizen / Orsay (older SS TV OS) we an absolute nightmare to develop for. LG's Web OS, and Android TV were so easy in comparison.
Perfect, now Google can kill Wear OS without fear of tizen taking it all.
Mission accomplished!
My fridges and washing machines plug into the wall and work when I press the GO button. That's the end of it. I resist "smart" things like the plague.
Don't you want to activate your washer when you're at the restaurant?
Consume. Then, consume more.
They definitely run Tizen.
The GE Profile "Kitchen Hub" over the range touch screen hood thingy runs Android, though.
Garmin watches are semi-smart and have great sensors. My Epix 2 Sapphire runs for 11 days on a charge as well.
Tried a Pixel, returned it for refund. Don't use iPhone or Samsung phone so their bespoke software wouldn't work for me.
Garmin Instinct 2 Solar gives me 31 days on a full charge if it doesn't get any sunlight. It is smart enough to vibrate me awake without waking my partner and receive notifications, no matter what Android/iOS phone I use.
What were your main gripes with the Pixel watch?
Now your comment has piqued my curiosity...I never considered a bigger smartwatch, and have kept myselft mostly to the Xiaomi band, which does more or less what I need it to...But I'm now curious how well does a Garmin cover the main points for me: -Read messages from SMS, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc (can I also reply to them, maybe voice-type or similar?) -Obviously tracking fitness, routes, heart rate and sleep etc it is probably way bounds out of the miband's league. -Can it pair to a headphone and use it to play music during a fitness run? Does it have esim support or similar to use data? (these are a clear no-no on the miband, but then again, heh...about 25 bucks it costed me!).
Hmmm the music storage... How does it work? Can you just send an mp3? Or does it need to be from a specific service? Bummer about the esim, I was wanting to rid of the phone while I'm out running.
Download songs and playlists from your Spotify, Deezer or Amazon Music accounts for phone-free listening.
So it seems it is specifically those services I found more info here
Awesome... Thanks! On second thought i think I'll hold out about the esim part. I can control the privacy on my phone decently enough but that would fly out of the window if the smart watch can call home on its own.
At the launch a lot of the features like sleep tracking were paywalled behind Fitbit, and you had to use Fitbit instead of Google Fit which I had been using.
After a week of using the Fitbit app I just found it annoying and pushed the social media aspect far too much for my liking. It felt more like a Fitbit than an Android Watch and that's not what I was looking for.
Prior to trying the Pixel I had an LG Watch Sport that I really enjoyed.
The Garmin while it lacks the ability to do things like control smart lights or integrate heavily into phone controls like the Pixel Watch did, its battery life is amazing, the sensors are great, it gets the alerts I need from the phone, and I've actually become very very fond of the gimmicky flashlight that's built in.
I can easily export health and data to CSVs, and move it if I want to.
The full offline map capabilities are also big if I go backpacking.
There is a Home Assistant app for Garmin watches that is pretty usable. The flashlight is surpassingly, hilariously, one of my favorite features though.
Another vote for Garmin, wearing a Descent mk2i as my daily and dive computer. Two weeks on a charge, all the tracking I could ask for. It's big, but so am I so it doesn't look ridiculous.
Me too. I don't see the point. My life is already full of distractions and I bet the batteries in those are hard to replace when they inevitably don't hold charge any more.
Buy g-shock, know time. Good.
They're useful for people with sleep issues, and people who are trying to get fit or lose weight. The sleep and fitness tracking features are great for statistic nerds like me. Or people with a heart condition who don't want to carry a bulky ECG machine with them everywhere. But if you fall into neither of those categories, I can understand why you would say such a thing.
I don't go anywhere without my smartwatch. Only time I take it off is to shower and charge. Owning one has improved my life for the better. For example, I found out that I have sleep apnea because of my watch. And I can track whether or not my workouts are burning muscle or fat, and adjust accordingly.
Best watch I ever owned cost me $7 at Wal Mart. I don't wear a wrist watch anymore.
I mean LOOK at everyone in this thread. "Muh TerribleCo SlaveBuilt 4 is only a week old and they've stopped pushing updates and the battery doesn't last the whole day anymore I have to charge it at lunch."
"What's it for?" "Text messages hit by brain 4 seconds faster."
Everyone? Well let me be a change then. I love my smart watch. It vibrating wakes me up easier than alarm. Step and sleep tracking is really useful to me. While a gimmick sure, I really enjoy being able to update and change my watch face on a whim. Even with always on display, constant heart rate tracking and step tracking, my watch easily lasts 48 hours and charges within an hour while I'm in the bathroom getting ready in the morning. I get it's not for everyone but far cheaper than a Rolex and way more functionality.
There's not a vendor out there I trust with an always on internet connected EKG on my wrist.
Cool, good for you.
I don’t really give a shit who knows whether my heartbeat is irregular.
Which I imagine like everything else Pine64 does will remain permanently in a state of "industry seconds some dead pixels are to be expected this is for developers and enthusiasts only no returns or refunds." I don't think they have any plans to ever bring a consumer ready product to market.
I have one. No dead pixels. It doesn't necessarily do fancy things but that's sort of why I got it. $30 and it tells the time, shows me notifications and lasts over a week before I have to charge it. Eeeeevery now and then I'll use it to control media or play 2048. Hey it even counts my steps!
damn I mean I agree with you I think they're mostly dumb and haven't recovered from my loss of pebble but what an appropriate handle
I had a Motorola one about 7 or 8 years ago. I was working at a grocery store at the time and we weren't allowed to take our phones out on the job, so I could use it to see and reply to important texts from my parents. I also drove my parents' car to and from that job. Their car at the time had no phone integration at all. Just a Bluetooth to 3.5mm headphone jack dongle plugged into the AUX input. So when driving that car, I used the watch as a makeshift hands-free system. Not actually hands free mind, but I could use it to skip songs and pause without taking my eyes off the road while listening to Spotify.
I loved my Fossil watch. And eventually I switched over to iPhone (which was a painful transition but 95% fine now), and Apple Watch is fantastic.
I also hear the Garmin ones are really nice.
Withings is a company that makes some health related tech products, like a watch. I bought a scale from them 5 or so years ago.
(For those who don't know: Withings makes an analog-looking watch with an excellent and discreet read-out on steps and sleep. I have watch-envy)
Pebble all over again.
I'm just not getting a smartwatch. I don't even trust Apple to keep supporting their watches after a couple of years.
Built-in obsolescence is bad enough. At the very least, these things should work until the hardware dies. Nope. Not anymore.
I’m still using an Apple Watch 3 that I got in a bundle with my iPhone X from my telco.
I need to charge it twice a day for ~30 minutes each, but it’s still chugging along.
I think I’ll finally upgrade to the new generation this year, but at that point it will be 7 years old - which is commendable for tech.
Sure, but how long until Apple does a whole new OS for their watch and stops supporting the old watches that can't run it?
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to hate on Apple, but not supporting their products long-term is not one of them.
Eventually they stop providing new OS updates, but they don’t brick/abandon devices.
Hell, I turned on my old iPhone 5 recently for the first time in over a decade and it happily connected to Apple’s servers and updated to the last supported OS version.
Even now that my Apple Watch isn’t receiving any more major OS updates, it can still interact with my up-to-date iPhone 14 without any issues.
If/when it happens, so be it - I’ll eat crow. But for the time being, Apple at least has long set/surpassed the standard for support lifetimes.
At some point, you just have to have a little bit of faith that not every company is going to immediately screw you over the first chance they get; otherwise you’ll never end up buying anything (new or otherwise), with the fear that the moment you do - they’ll drop support.
I mean, some companies do deserve that level of scepticism - but honestly, for all their other faults Apple is not one of them.
At some point, you just have to have a little bit of faith that not every company is going to immediately screw you over the first chance they ge
We're talking about the same company that sold a monitor stand for $1000, right?
the watches still work fine with an old OS. my son uses my old watch gen 1. it just doesn't have all the new features or whatever
I've used my Garmin for 2 years now and I'm really happy with it. In fact I have nothing to complain about it.
Fair comment. My point is that this watch will probably last 5+ years which in absolute in not that bad. Compared to Apple or Samsung, that's much better.
You should consider that bad. The average smartwatch is what, $250? Every 5 years? That's nuts. I realize we have to put up with it because we have no choice, but we shouldn't have to.
Samsung switched from Tizen to WearOS literally 4 months after I got my Galaxy watch 2. That was annoying. $200 is way too much to spend on such a short-lived product.
I mean, Fossil ended support for my Gen 5 a while back and... It still works. I mean, I mostly use it as an alarm and "ability to feel my phone vibrate when ringing" machine but it still operates...
Until it doesn't, I guess. The battery life is already shit and I'm jealous of my partner's Garmin.
Garmin did the same thing with Forerunner. They stopped software support 6 months after release of 220, and the very moment 235 was released. Their tech support's answer to any problem was "do a factory reset". And yet they are still considered one of the best brands for navigation and sports.
Still fine with my Pixel Watch I got for free with my Pixel 7P.
I would have never get a smart watch though. Not my jam.
Similar thing happened to me. Bought a bunch of watch faces too, only to discover that none of them would transfer over when I got a new watch.
Perfectly? Your battery really lasting all day long? I gave up my 3 last year as unless I started making compromises, I could not get a full day without charging (mind you I'm an up very early and bed very late person, so it's a long day I was asking for).
Yep, mine still lasts 2 days if I push it, though Ive been plonking it on its puck every morning while I get up since I got it at launch, its only ever dropped below 20% a handful of times. Sure ive been charging it more than most, but it doesnt do full battery cycles per charge so its lasted longer
46MM Galaxy Watch here and I can get 24H or sometimes a bit more provided I switch it to night mode when I'm sleeping. Still using AOD, cont HR monitor etc. Yeah, this old thing is getting long in the tooth, but I came to it from WearOS, really don't want to go back.
Not a lot is appealing to me in the smartwatch market currently. Good for my wallet, I suppose.
Is this the norm for smart watches? I just bought my first one, a Redmi watch 3 active, 6 days ago and still haven't charged it yet (just got to 18%.)
There's no way I'd put up with another device that I have to charge every day.
Depends. My Garmin goes for close to a week but my galaxy 6 barely makes 20h. I don't run anything fancy on it other than enabling always on screen. I won't compromise on that as I think it's ridiculous to have to shake your arm to see what time it is.
It's normal for most afaik but that's because manufacturers make a trimmed down phone to go on your wrist which means you have to charge it daily, without realising it's on your wrist so it doesn't need to be super slim with huge cuts to battery size to go in your pocket.
My garmin has an always on display, heart rate, steps, blood oxygen, thermometer, barometer and whatever else and yet still manages a 4 week battery life, 3 weeks with normal use (1h gps per day, using the touchscreen and higher brightness) or even around 50-60h of GPS/more frequent heart rate/active maps activity tracking
It's on 7% now and is giving me an estimated battery life of >2 days, which just shows how abysmal many smart watch battery lives are
To a degree it depends on settings. But consider that I've been using this watch for 5 years or so, and I have all my settings more or less "maxed out" regarding consumption. I don't even have auto-brightness on because I always found it annoying for it to adjust when I flicked my wrist - I just have it locked at about 80%.
But yeah, most smartwatches that I've ever been familiar with are getting a couple days when new unless you turn off features. (Bear in mind the newest thing I have first-hand experience with is my original Galaxy Watch, and which I am currently still wearing) I want to say I was making it 48h + when new, but that was so long ago...
For typical smartwatches when I see impressive claims regarding battery life much longer than that, it usually turns out that the person has turned off one thing or another that I don't want to turn off.
Look at Hybrid smartwatches in general, and in particular some of the Garmin models (pack a lunch, there are a LOT of Garmin models, some very similar to each other) for super long battery life, I think.
All this is just IME, and I don't pay really close attention to smartwatch tech except peeking every couple years to see if there's anything that might convince me to move on from my Galaxy Watch. I do like some of the Garmin hybrid models, but I'm not sure I'd like them longterm.
I have a Galaxy Watch4 and it would last me about 3 days new and is down to around two days now. I've already bought a replacement battery but haven't bothered to put it in yet.
This is with the always on display off and everything else on including wifi.
It depends. Wear OS is heavy because it's much more feature filled. I switched from a Garmin to a Galaxy Watch 4 because the feature set of Wear OS fits my use case much more than the Vivoactive 4 I had.
Agreed. My old pebble lasts for over a week, not that I use it for much more than an alarm clock/metronome nowadays.
It does those jobs extremely well, though.
A used watch 5 pro (or just buy a new one) can be had for like $160. I can leave all my stuff turned on and I always get over 48 hours. Plus WOS is just better than tizen, hands down.
That said, I had a ticwatch pro 5 for a bit and it was better in every single way but one, so I had to send it back. It had a couple bugs they couldn't figure out how to get rid of with my Note 20 Ultra compatibility.
Still sad I don't have that watch anymore. Awesome dual screen set up, better processor, more ram, faster ram, more storage, bigger and longer lasting battery, Smoother navigation. It would be the go to android watch if they could get their software compatibility up to snuff and support their devices longer.
Plus WOS is just better than tizen, hands down.
It's changed a lot since I moved off my Huawei then. And the primary reasons I went Tizen when I did were the glacial pace of software improvements and the shitty "upgrade" they announced to the SoC all the WearOS devices were using at the time. I don't recall the details of the crappy qualcomm "upgrade" aside from remembering that it really wasn't one in practice, and solved neither the battery life nor performance problems of WearOS at the time. (not even sure they were calling it WearOS then, IIRC they changed it from the original name around that time)
A used watch 5 pro (or just buy a new one) can be had for like $160. I can leave all my stuff turned on and I always get over 48 hours.
I'm not surprised a watch several gens newer is going to get better battery life than my original GW, but I don't find I'm fussed enough about anything about it to spend money on an upgrade currently.
I have the OG 46 mm (since its launch) and still charge it only about every 3 days.
Mostly use it to track steps, check time (obviously) and skip songs on my phone.
That's suprising to hear for me. I got a HUAWEI smartwatch and its battery lasted about two weeks.
I remember Samsung trying to run a WWDC-like conference in San Francisco many years ago. They were offering free Tizen watches as enticement for developers to show up (AppleWatch devs had to buy their own). None of the professional mobile devs I knew back then said they would go.
As Microsoft found out with WindowsPhone, it's really hard to get traction if you're third.
Nokia era Lumias were amazing phones, and I loved the OS, but a lack of apps kept it from ever being a contender. Still miss my live tiles though.
What the commenter above was referring to is special API access for Nokia and a few key third-parties that regular devs were not allowed to use.
It was a strange time for Windows phone. Agreed, such a shame, it was an interesting UX-first design for its time.
They also didn’t treat devs very well. A lot of folks pulled their apps or let them die on the vine instead of having to majorly replatform to support the latest versions of their mobile OS.
This made their App Store go from mediocre to downright anemic.
IMHO, he wasn’t great, but I feel like the their software has really gone downhill since he left. All they do is shuffle chairs, reorg - not ship.
That said, Ballmer didn’t do a great job with the early days of digital music and mobile. He mocked a lot of that stuff, then was forced to get into those games way too late.
He didn't seem to get that the PC had been replaced as the major consumer form factor by Apple and Google with their mobile devices.
I assume he didn't understand how those devices were different from like Palm, Blackberry and stuff like Tablet PC.
This is not about the smart tv tizen, no? I see the article talks about smartwatches. The naming on Samsung's side is confusing.
There are still issues with WearOS, but I think some of that is hardware. Last I heard, Qualcomm's wearable SoCs were trash, but Samsung is in a good position since they have both the SoC fab and make the watch itself.
Many industries are shifting to a model where Android is the de facto OS for consumer-facing interactions. It's not well optimized outside of phones yet, but it is rapidly improving. Many cars run Android now, for example.
I'm moderately optimistic about the next generation of WearOS devices.
WearOS, at least the Samsung variant of it, is goddamned awful. It seems to want to be a full standalone device when I want it to just be an extension of my phone, and it's an extension of my phone when I want it to stand alone. Worst of both worlds.
I miss my Pebble. Week-long battery, truly always-on-screen, and knew what it was trying to be (just show me notifications)
I used to have a Pebble too but I've long since given up on any hope of the market building something similar that looks as cool as the Pebble was. What exactly do you think is awful about Samsung's Wear OS? I tried both the Pixel Watch and the Galaxy Watch and I greatly prefer Samsung's.
I rocked an OG Pebble as well as a Pebble Time for a while. The best replacement I could find was the Garmin Fenix watches, which use a similar display and offer comparable battery life (or better, for the bigger ones) but unlike the old Pebbles they cost major bucks. They're considerably more featureful, though. All of them also have round displays, not the rectangular like the Pebbles.
I'm quite happy with my Fenix 6 Solar and have no desire to ditch it, nor trade it in for any of the newer models.
I'm still rocking a Galaxy Watch 4: one of the first Samsung watches with WearOS. It has a true always-on screen, and most should. The always-on was essential to me. I generally notice within 60 minutes if an update or some "feature" tries to turn it off. Unfortunately, that's the only thing off about your comment.
It's a pretty rough experience. The battery is hit or miss. At good times, I could get 3 days. Keeping it locked, (like after charging) used to kill it within 60 minute (thankfully, fixed after a year). Bad updates can kill the battery life, even when new: from 3 days life to 10 hours, then to 3 days again. Now, after almost 3 years, it's probably about 30 hours, rather than 3 days.
In general, the battery life with always-on display should last more than 24 hours. That'd be pretty acceptable for a smartwatch, but is it a smartwatch?
It can't play music on its own without overheating. It can't hold a phone call on its own without overheating. App support is limited, but the processor seems to struggle most of the time. Actually smart features seem rare, especially for something that needs consistent charging.
Most would be better off with a Pebble or less "smart" watch: better water resistance, better battery, longer support, 90% of the usable features, and other features to help make up for any differences.
It's not a now thing. It's already here. My thermostat, sprinkler controller, and rice cooker all run Android
It makes sense. Everyone knows how to program and develop hardware for it and it is free to use. The worst that will happen is that Android development goes in a different direction, and you can fork it if that happens.
Aren't smart watches almost universally bricked by default unless you undergo an online activation, sharing all kinds of personal information?
I'm stuck on miband 3, since it's the last model sold unlocked.
I'll buy a phone and laptop, but I'm done investing in any other products that won't guarantee a basic feature set for the life of their device.
I've been contemplating getting a galaxy watch, but I was waiting for Samsung to get it right.
Consider a Garmin smart watch. I love mine and the battery lasts over 8 days even with an OLED display
I can actually get one as part of my company healthplan. Which model do you have? I was leaning towards the Venu 3 over the Forerunner.
I splurged and bought an Epix since I like the design and the OLED display but I've seen the venu 3 and it's really nice too.
It's been super trusty, the flashlight feature is absolutely amazing and I use it on a daily basis, it's brighter than my phone's flashlight too which is crazy.
No problem! I do a ton of research on these so if you have any questions feel free to ask
Looking forward to getting a Pinetime. It might not be polished, but community support never truly ends.
Lame. WearOS is laggy garbage. My Watch 2 Active was way more responsive and functional than my Watch 3 4 Classic is. Animations stutter constantly and half the time it doesn't even react to my touch. Bring back Tizen.
