Google and Samsung announced they have developed a common operating system for wearable devices. Samsung's Tizen will be folded into Wear OS for a unified platform that will start rolling out later this year on Samsung and other devices. The new software also integrates features from Fitbit following its takeover by Google.
Samsung said the cooperation would allow it to bring new experiences to consumers in areas like health and fitness, as well as reach a bigger number of developers for its watches. It's contributing technology to provide optimized performances, advanced sensor batching, low-power displays and long battery life to the unified platform. It will also continue to support older smartwatches running Tizen for three years after their release.
Google said the collaboration builds on a long partnership between the companies and each other's strengths. In terms of performance, the collaboration has made apps start up to 30 percent faster on the latest chipsets, with smooth user interface animations and motion. To achieve longer battery life, they've optimized the lower layers of the operating system, taking advantage of low-power hardware cores. This has led to optimizations such as the ability to run the heart rate sensor continuously during the day, track sleep overnight and still have battery for the next day.
With the next update of Wear launching later this year, users can access shortcuts to important functions from anywhere in the watch, as well as customise the home screen more with Tiles for favorite apps. Google's also updating its own apps for wearables, including Maps and Google Assistant, and Google Pay will be redesigned and expand to 26 new countries, beyond the 11 currently available. YouTube Music will also arrive on Wear later this year, equipped with features like smart downloads.
The company also announced the beginning of a health and fitness platform created in collaboration with Samsung and incorporating features from Fitbit. This platform provides fitness and health data generated from sensors, contextually-aware algorithms, and all-day health monitoring. It comes with new APIs for developers to add their own services.
With the latest Android Studio Arctic Fox Beta, developers can test out all the upcoming features for Wear. New tools inclide a Tiles API and a watch face design editor built by Samsung.
