Updated June 7, 2018: False alarm, folks. On June 7, Evan Blass responded to his original Tweet with — "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)." A Wear OS Samsung watch may happen at some point down the road, but not anytime in the near future.
It's turning out that 2018 could be a very exciting year for Wear OS. Following rumors that Google's working on its own Pixel Watch, it's now being reported that Samsung's developing a future Gear smartwatch that'll ditch the Tizen operating system in favor of Wear OS.
Earlier this week, a rumor popped up on Chinese social network Weibo suggesting that the Gear S4 will be powered by Wear OS instead of Tizen. Weibo tips/leaks are usually pretty hit or miss, but shortly after that, Evan Blass took to Twitter with the following message —
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/999255737762308096
This doesn't necessarily mean that Samsung will decide to release a Wear OS watch to the masses, but this piling evidence leads us to believe that the company is certainly toying with the idea.
Tizen has been Samsung's operating system of choice for most all of its wearables, save for the Gear Live that was powered by Android Wear and released in 2014.
Samsung's gotten a lot right with Tizen, but one of its pain points has long-been lacking developer support. Wear OS is far more endowed in these regards, and having a big name like Samsung backing the platform would be huge.
Would you like to see a Samsung smartwatch with Wear OS?
