Samsung is widely expected to unveil a successor to the original Galaxy Gear smartwatch at its Unpacked event at Mobile World Congress next week. In a new development, The Verge today learned that Samsung could even unveil more than new smartwatch. It provides little additional information about these different models but a separate report by USA Today suggests that one of those could ditch Android in favour of Tizen as its operating system. With Samsung and other Tizen partners planning to hold a Tizen-specific event at MWC the day before the Unpacked event, the rumour can certainly not be discounted.
USA Today adds that this new Galaxy Gear would use an HTML5 version of Tizen. The move could open the door to a wider range of HTML5-based apps instead of relying solely on native apps. It remains to be seen how well such a watch would perform as web apps often don’t perform as well as native ones.
It’s also unclear whether a Tizen-powered smartwatch would be compatible with other devices. With no other Tizen devices currently on the market (unless you count the Systena developer tablet), Samsung could find itself supporting a limited number of devices as it did with the original Galaxy Gear, a move that dramatically limited its appeal. But Samsung could also launch it as more of a standalone device, much like the Pebble, and limit compatibility to some key functions such as message notifications.
Given the rather tepid reaction that Samsung got for the first Galaxy Gear, it remains to be seen if it will really split its efforts and simultaneously try to support two platforms for its smartwatches.
If this rumour turns out to be accurate, it could well be that Samsung continues to use these early generation devices as glorified prototypes to learn what features appeal to users and which don’t. This could give it a tremendous advantage over competitors but also risks damaging its reputation.
Let’s see what Unpacked5 brings us next week.