Last year when Samsung launched the Galaxy Gear smartwatch it was revolutionary. For a time. Then people realized that it was severely crippled, and had much room for improvement. The Galaxy Gear ran android, and paired only with the Galaxy Note 3 when it was first released. Fast Forward to today and Samsung now has three new wearables headed for mass consumer availability with the Gear 2, the Gear 2 Neo, and the Gear Fit. This time around instead of powering both new smartwatches with Android like they did with their previous smartwatch iteration, Samsung opted to run both the Gear 2 and the Gear 2 Neo on Tizen. Yes, that mysterious OS that Samsung has been working on for years that we have yet to see in a smartphone is powering both new smartwatches this year. What about the Gear Fit though? As of yesterday, we all thought that the Gear Fit was running Tizen just like the other two offerings. According to CNET though this is apparently untrue.
Samsung reportedly told them that the Gear Fit wearable isn’t running on Tizen, but it isn’t running on Android either. Essentially, it isn’t running on any OS at all. Which makes this wearable a Ronin without a master, if you can picture with me that the OS would be the master to the device. This is of course considering that the software that runs the Gear Fit is not really an OS. Samsung says that the Gear Fit runs on a mashup of both Android and Tizen, but has no name to call it. Or at least they aren’t telling the public just yet. Perhaps they have a plan for it in other devices going forward, giving them reason to keep things hush hush. Samsung’s plan with the Gear Fit and the software that powers it is to keep things within a closed loop. They plan to work with developers to build apps for the Fit themselves, rather then make it open source, which will allow them to keep a tighter lid on things with the device. All three new Gear wearable devices look to be improvements over what Samsung has offered since last year, but they are still fairly limited. The Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo work with more devices then ever before, but none of those on the compatibility list are non-Samsung. The same goes for the Gear Fit, and with its in house development only for their fitness centric wearable band, it could be a tough sell when there are more open and available options out there.