Samsung introduced its Galaxy Watch in 2018 and it featured its own Tizen OS which was supposed to rival that on the Apple Watch and Google’s Wear OS too.
Now, six years later Samsung appears ready to let go of its support for Tizen OS on smartwatches altogether.
In 2021, Samsung switched to Wear OS for its Galaxy Watch 4, a move that proved fatal for its Tizen OS on smartwatches.
Android Authority reported that Reddit user Seaweed_Maximum have indicated Samsung’s termination schedule for Galaxy Store access for Tizen smartwatches.
Accordingly, by September 30, 2024, the Galaxy Store will stop selling paid Tizen watch content, including apps, watch faces, and more.
By May 31, 2025, the Galaxy Store will stop allowing new downloads of free Tizen watch content.
By September 30, 2025, the “My Apps” section in the Galaxy Store will stop allowing re-downloads, thereby ending access to any further paid or free Tizen content.
This schedule will reportedly apply to all Samsung Gear smartwatches, and Samsung Galaxy-branded watches that run on Tizen OS, namely the Galaxy Watch, Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Watch Active, and Galaxy Watch Active 2.
The number of people affected by this will likely be limited as the last Tizen product from Samsung was the Galaxy Watch 3 which was released in 2020. Those who have that product, or earlier ones, would likely be looking to upgrade them anyway by next year.
For those who have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 released in 2021 or later, it operates on Google’s Wear OS and so the Tizen OS phasing out will not affect them.
Although there has been no official confirmation from Samsung regarding the Tizen OS support for smartwatches, Samsung had indicated, years earlier, that this was the direction it was headed. “At Samsung, we always put customers at the heart of everything we do. That’s why we are committed to bringing them the best possible smartwatch experiences,” the company said in 2021 after shifting the range to Wear OS. “For customers who already own the Tizen-OS based Galaxy smartwatches, we are continuing to provide at least three years of software support after the product launch.”
