Yesterday, there was a report stating that Tizen based wearables, like their Smartwatch range, are not currently compatible with the new Tizen Smartphones. This is unfortunately the current situation, but a Samsung source has confirmed to Tizen Experts that a “Tizen version of Samsung Gear Manager is currently under development and it is simply a matter of time until Tizen Smartphones are supported”. We do not know if this will only support the latest Gear S2 Smartwatch, which Samsung has sold over 70,000 units to date, or will it also support previous models such as the Galaxy Gear, Gear 2, and Gear Neo.
Gear Manager is a required software application is Installed on the Smartphone to enable connectivity to the Smartwatch. Once Installed you can change settings, Install applications and watch faces etc. The app is currently only supported on Android 4.4+ devices, that have a minimum of 1GB of RAM, and will also be compatible with Apple’s iOS 8.4 and iPhone 5 next year. As Tizen has much lower memory requirements than Android it is hoped that it will be able to run on the Samsung Z3.
We have previously seen Gear Manager running on the Tizen based Samsung Z at the Tizen Developer Conference 2014 in San Francisco and also the Tizen Developer Summit 2014 in Moscow, but that is quite an old version now. We were originally hoping the Tizen Gear Manager would be released with the Samsung Z3, but that did not materialise.
Keep following Team Tizen for all the latest Tizen developments.
Related News
