If you’re a fan of the Samsung Galaxy Gear series of devices, know that there will be a few modifications made to them in the nearby future. The Gear was one of the first devices in the smartwatch series of devices ( sure, some will argue that the Pebble was in fact the first, predating it by a few months, but history is written by the winners in the end – and let’s take a moment to admit which one was more successful between the two ).
Even now, with the newest generation of Android Wear being unveiled, the first Galaxy Gear is still a pretty neat device and a great alternative for anyone that wants an Android device small enough to fit on your wrist. And who’s to argue – especially since there’s quite an abundance of apps existing for this series of devices. That’s in no small part due to the fact that, at its core, the Gear is actually running a very small Android tailored to be wrist-friendly, however, this comes at a bit of a downfall for the battery life. This problem is said to be resolved somewhere in the near future, as Samsung is planning to migrate all Gear devices to Tizen with the next update.
When the Galaxy Gear 2 was unveiled earlier this year ( I believe it happened when the S5 was unveiled at Unpacked 2014 ), it came as a surprise to some that the device was running Tizen, and not the usual Android. Many have been wondering since then whether or not the original Gear would be updated to Tizen too, so that apps for both could be made with a single SDK. The people at Samsung have actually gone ahead and posted a video detailing how the Tizen-equipped Gear will run. I’ll post the video below ( the original Galaxy Gear is the one on the left, those on the right are the Native Tizen models ).
This may come across as a bit of bad news, but I guess it’s to be somewhat expected that apps built for the Android of the first Galaxy Gear won’t be working on Tizen. Those who have it and already own an amount of custom-made apps for this device will probably be in for a bit o a disappointment.
