Watch Operating Systems

This is kinda becoming my Android discussion page, so I'll talk a little about a change that Samsung has made, and why it doesn't matter at all.

Samsung has a couple watches on the market, the Samsung Galaxy Gear and the Gear 2, and the Gear 2 Neo. The Gear 2 watches were announced yesterday, and have some people in a tizzy.

The original Gear watch that Samsung announced over the summer was not well received by most consumers. Partially it was some of the limitations it had initially (I only worked with the Note 3 when it first came out), and partially it was the price (retail was almost $400). The battery only lasted about a day (25hours), and the camera was fairly big in the band.

The one thing that Samsung tried was putting the full Android OS on the watch. I commend them for trying to put a full mobile OS  on a watch. There are several facilities in the Android OS that probably weren't needed for a watch. As an example, the watch didn't have any phone hardware, so that facility could be turned off, but probably there are things that cause the OS to at least check for the hardware.

The new gear 2 watches no longer run Android. The new watches run Samsung's other OS, Tizen. Some folks thought Samsung was using Tizen as a threat to Google. The worry was that Samsung was going to switch all their phones and tablets from Android to Tizen, freezing Google out of that section of the market. Maybe Samsung folks were making that threat to Google, but recently Samsung and Google have put together a more cooperative agreement.

Tizen on the watch will make some people wring their hands. They will say, it is the end of Android, and that Samsung has started the switch. Maybe Samsung will try some Tizen phones, but I don't see them running all their mobile devices on Tizen. The Android/Google eco-system has too many facilities that Samsung would have to duplicate and get 100% right. Some people think Android is inferior to iOS, can you imagine the reaction if the Tizen eco-system isn't as good as iOS on day 1.

At the heart, or at least the lowest level, both Tizen and Android run Linux OS. There are many variants of Linux, and over the last couple (ten?) years the Linux OS has been optimized for lower power. Anything put on top of Linux will use more resources, and more power (IE Battery). Faster processors are generally more power hungry as well.

A watch should last a while before needing a new battery or recharge. How inconvenient to be somewhere without a charger, but needing a watch to work.

A watch doesn't need as much operating system as a smart phone. I played with the TI Chronos watch. That watch didn't have bluetooth or WiFi, but it still had wireless capability, so it could be programmed and get alerts from a computer, using the enclosed USB FOB. It has fitness functions, and tells time, and each segment in the face is programmable. The cool thing is, the battery lasts about a year!

Last week I saw on Hack A Day a watch someone built with an Arduino (ok now this post matches the charter of the blog :-). This watch has bluetooth, and can talk to an Android device. There are no claims on the battery life, but it has a rechargable lithium battery, and would guess, it might last several days at least. Put something like this in a 3D printed case, and some other cleanups, and it could be something I would be proud to wear.

No on seems to care what OS any of the other smart watches run. I've heard Pebble runs the FreeRTOS, but I don't know or care. Sony smart watch, according to Wikipedia runs the Micrium uC/OS-II. Meta watch also seems to run the FreeRTOS according to Wikipedia.

None of the other smart watches run Android. Samsung tried it, and it didn't work. They are smart to try something else.

Samsung isn't Great

I was all excited about the Samsung infrastructure, but I see some big cracks. I've got the Galaxy NoteII and the Galaxy Note 10.1. My wife also has the Galaxy NoteII. Don't get me wrong, Samsung builds great hardware.

Samsung software is not so great! They go a real strong 90% of what someone needs. I think as long as you stay in the Samsung family, things get along. Once outside, well, that is when the trouble starts. I've never signed up for any of the Samsung services, since I was already signed up for the Google services that meet my needs.

Things like Peel, gosh what a great little app for knowing what is happening on the TV networks. Easy to program and easy to get all setup. They sent out an update (I didn't think it needed it, but I took the update, and then the IR didn't work so well on one TV. I reset up that TV, and then it worked again, but why did the update break things???

The other feature of the Notes, are the pens. Wow, how cool is that. There have been no updates to the SNote software since I got the units, and the software is almost there. The text recognition is wonderful, no training, and it was recognizing my chicken scratches almost perfect. My problem is with the text boxes. Why can't the text boxes be more automatic. They come up small, and aren't easy to resize, and don't always put spaces between words. That makes the software, close to unusable.

I use the SNotes to take written notes, and don't bother to convert to text. That removes the search capability. I say I'll get to converting the written text to either a blog post or a wiki entry for my work documents. But that will add work, and may not help long term.

I feel Samsung pollutes the systems with crapware too. The AllShareCast dongle app is probably really useful if you have an AllShareCast dongle, but I don't. Why can't they make that an optional app instead of requiring it on all devices. ChatOn, SamsungLink and SamsungPushService all seem benign, but I need to keep those things up to date, in case there are exploits in the current version. (If you want a laugh, look in the playstore for reviews of SamsungLink). Why don't they make their services compelling, rather than same or worse than what I have today.

So now Samsung releases Gear. What a bad joke! It only works with the newest Samsung devices (for now??). The NoteIII and the newest Note 10.1. Dang you mean I need to update all my hardware to use a watch that might work for a day? I don't think so. This silly watch can't be very useful, since it has a tiny screen, and can't really talk to the outside world without a tablet or phone. Battery life of 25hours, well, hmmm... I better not spend the night at a friends house unless I brought a charger. And why not a wireless charger?

Now Samsung wants to start a whole new infrastructure. They want people to look at Tizen as a replacement for Android. Cool! their apps are so good, why not have me looking at devices based on Tizen, they will be better than...a sharp stick in the eye, I guess. (where is that sarcasm tag??)

No, I think my next device will NOT be Samsung. They don't have to do much to fix things in the next year, they only need to make what they have usable. Going for the next big thing is great, if they did it great. They haven't done anything great so far, and I don't seem 'em going that way. They will continue to do things that look like they could do things great, and will continue to disappoint. Unless they actually do great things, they will start being another mediocre phone company.

Samsung will need to support current devices, and make improvements. The Note line is clearly different than any other phone/tablet available, and they can build on that by fixing the software! Samsung has a reputation of crapifying phones, and if they quit doing that going forward that would help their reputation. By removing the crap, they may have an incentive to make their apps compelling, and people will want them, and actually install them. Today, all the owners of Samsung devices are forced to have the crap preloaded, and all we want to do is remove it!

It is up to you Samsung!