3 ms·
It's a real shame because the platform is really starting to get good. > Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, incl
by freedomben 3y ago
It's a real shame because the platform is really starting to get good.
> Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, including exclusive rights to the new "Wear OS 3" release and exclusive apps. That year, 2021, featured head-to-head August Wear OS releases of Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 and Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch. Samsung's watch had a faster, Samsung-made SoC, ran Wear OS 3, and cost $250, while Fossil was stuck with Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag.
It sounds like Google really did sabotage them and they have a right to be upset.
- dangus 3y agoI disagree. Their smartwatch sales peaked almost 10 years ago. Fossil is a declining brand relative to its traditional watch peers as well. That kind of thing only happens thanks to long-term mismanagement that Fossil can only blame itself for. They’re a company that any businessperson would throw under the bus to court Samsung.
- partitioned 3y agoAt this point the company is a fossil
- rjzzleep 3y agoAnother thing to mention is that Qualcomm had zero incentive to make something good for wearables. It's an unfortunate side effect of having such an absolute market dominating position.
- kotaKat 3y agoGoogle sabotaged the entire product with the Samsung partnership. I watched people abandon Wear OS both from the hardware front and the software front because of the fragmentation of the platform. It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue.
- doublepg23 3y ago> It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue. Sounds like Google for the past decade.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y agoGoogle sabotaged the entire WearOS platform, they gave the market to Apple on a silver plate. Lack of updates, not treating it as a first class platform, etc
- Fnoord 3y agoApple? I mean, I don't have an iPhone, so it is pointless to have an Apple Watch, right?
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y agoNo but I wouldn't be shocked if compatible watches influences people's choice of smartphone, it did for me.
- Fnoord 3y agoWell, an iPhone. How marvelous. I cannot even replace the battery or screen in 5 minutes. I have an Android smartphone which is easy to repair (Fairphone). It is a dealbreaker for me (although I'm glad Apple have been improving lately, and also software support for other Android devices is going better). Therefore, I cannot dabble into the Apple Watch ecosystem either. And you know what, it actually seems like a neat device (sans the repairability). And I am also a happy user of macOS and I know I'd like tvOS just as well as my Nvidia Shield (who forced ads down my throat in an Android update and pointed fingers at Google).
- RobotToaster 3y agoGoogle also aren't helping it by keeping it closed source. Android being partly open source was one of the major drivers of it's adoption. (Ironically Tizen was open source)
- ncruces 3y agoAfter years of Qualcomm not updating its wearable chips and keeping them on 22nm, Samsung had exclusive first dibs access to its own 5nm chip. A new version of Android was built that required newer chips, and that's what it took for Qualcomm to finally release something worth it. The first Pixel Watch had a Samsung Exynos, Pixel Watch 2 a Qualcomm chipset.