There are rumors that Samsung is switching from Tizen to Wear OS in their next set of Galaxy Watches. As a Tizen developer, I’m obviously upset about the idea. But as a Galaxy Watch user, I’m disappointed.
Samsung broke up with Google’s smartwatch platform years ago for a reason and I have little reason to believe that reason has changed. From my experience with the Moto 360 and the later Fossil watches, I’ve noticed that Wear OS watches have terrible battery lives. As far as app support, sure there are more apps, but they’re aren’t great and the big ones that I want like August for my smart locks are Apple Watch only. In fact I suspect there are lot of apps that are Apple Watch first.
In my opinion Google’s relationship with Wear OS can be best described like this: “Ad company doesn’t want to invest in a platform that they can’t sale ads on.”
There are things I’d rather Samsung do to help their smart watches.
They could make Bixby’s updates more reliable. Even with auto-updates enabled and Wi-Fi turned on these updates do not always make it. There are times when I want to use Bixby to send a message and I can’t because it does not have the latest update and this is absolutely required for some reason. And when I try to manually do the update, it fails from time to time.
I have a competing app, “Talk to Alexa”, that is tiny in size by comparison. My latest update downloaded to my Galaxy Watch 2 without my noticing.
They could streamline their multiple apps situation for their wearables. For whatever reason, for a time when I would switch from my Watch Active 2 to my Galaxy Watch or to my much older Gear S3, I would have to re-enable notification access for each watch specific component. It is as if these components cannot exist at the same time.
Samsung should stop dropping features of their watch that makes it special, like MST, and the rotating bezel. The last of which boggles my mind because EVERY SINGLE REVIEW would talk about the “satisfying click” of the rotating bezel before it was removed. They would mention it when it was gone, and talk about again when it was back.
Most importantly Samsung, and other people, should stop comparing the the Galaxy Watch to the Apple Watch as if they were competitors. Competing implies that users have a choice between these two products. Because of Apple’s restrictions, it’s not much of a choice. As far as I’m concerned they exist in two SEPARATE markets.
iPhone users who want a smartwatch are most likely going to buy an Apple Watch because “it works better” with their iPhone. This is probably because the Apple Watch has exclusive access to certain iOS API’s. It also doesn’t help that with Apple’s bans third-party payment systems, requiring a 30% cut to use theirs. This makes creating a paid app store for watch faces and watch apps for other watches difficult. Other watches cannot compete in functionality or richness in content within the Apple ecosystem because Apple restricts it. Likewise Android users simply cannot use an Apple Watch because they are not compatible.
I think Fitbit and Garmin are Samsung’s true competitors. It’s good to look to the Apple Watch for inspiration for new features but understand that the market is Android.
And one more thing about apps. The viability of Fitbit shows that the smartwatch market is still not so mature that apps will make or break a platform. My experience with my Fitbit Blaze was a very pleasant one. It had a multi-day battery that charged over a lunch break. This battery made tracking steps and sleep quite painless and fun. And because of step competitions you could bring your friends in on the fun. No other watch has replicated this experience.
Apps are great but we shouldn’t lose sight of what people are using their smart watches for. Like replying to notifications, tracking workouts, sleep, and taking phone calls. Nothing against the Tizen YouTube app, but holding my arm up anymore than 20 or 30 seconds is exhausting.
The Microsoft Surface didn’t do so well in the beginning when it was marketed as an iPad competitor. It was only when it embraced being a laptop where it started to shine. Likewise Samsung should embrace those things that make the Galaxy Watch a great device and not get lost in their competition with Apple.