It’s been four years since Samsung and Google collaborated on a new watch, but it’s apparently time to go again with a rumour now circulating that a new Galaxy Watch is to be announced later this year.
According to a posting from user IceUniverse – a user with a history of leaking accurate information, the company is working on a new watch which was to be the Gear S4, but will now be released in the ‘second half of the year’ and called the ‘Galaxy Watch’.
The post is from Chinese social media site Weibo, with the translation shown here:
The collaboration between Google and Samsung on the Gear Live didn’t really go well, with updates not making it much beyond a few increments. Samsung of course branched off and created their Tizen powered Gear line of watches which have been moderately well received. The developer community hasn’t however embraced Tizen – so perhaps it’s time for a change.
Google has made moves to re-invent their watch OS, recently renaming it to Wear OS to de-stigmatise its use amongst iOS users. At Google I/O earlier this month, Google revealed that 1/3 of installs of Wear OS were on iOS hence the move to a non-Android associated name.
Samsung has great clout, as well as engineering and design prowess for watches as we’ve seen in the Gear line of watches. Google is improving Wear OS, and perhaps if the rumoured Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 SoC is involved we may see something quite special if this rumour comes to fruition.
