It's goodbye to Android as Samsung Galaxy Gear Tizen update arrives

sincity · May 30, 2014

Samsung has followed through on its pledge to rid the original Galaxy Gear smartwatch of the Android operating system by updating the device with the home cooked Tizen software.

The update, which as already started to roll out, will bring those early swartwatch adopters up to speed with the current crop of Gear 2 , Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit devices, which arrived on Tizen out of the box.

This will mean original Galaxy Gear owners (it's not so Galaxy-ish now, of couse), will have access to many of the features present on the second-generation models.

That means it'll earns a sleep mode, which measures your sleeping patterns and an exercise mode which'll track your movement thanks to the pedometer (no heartrate tracker though),

Back up first

Tizen 2.2.0 also brings a stand music app, a privacy lock, new font sizes and styles, new clock-faces and wallpapers and easier access to key settings.

SamMobile, which got an early preview of the update has warned that installing Tizen will wipe all data from the wearable and will prevent some of the third party apps from working. Users will have the opportunity to back up before installing the update via Samsung's Kies platform.

The Galaxy Gear was somewhat of a commercial and critical failure, but for the limited number of people who jumped on board with the wearables era early, at least your smartwatch gets somewhat of a new lease of life with this update.