Samsung is currently flooding the market with wearable devices. It sells the Galaxy Gear 2, which is its full-featured smartwatch, alongside the Gear 2 Neo, a cheaper and less feature-packed smartwatch. These two devices run a custom operating system designed by Samsung called Tizen. This was a switch from Android, which powered the initial Gear smartwatch. Samsung has one other wearable called the Gear Fit that is smaller and focuses on fitness tracking. Interestingly, it runs neither Android or Tizen. Instead, it uses a custom real-time operating system (RTOS) that helps the Gear Fit run efficiently, according to SamMobile. The custom RTOS allows the Gear Fit to achieve 3 to 4 days of battery life, much longer than the Gear 2 or Gear 2 Neo.
Since the Gear Fit will be running an RTOS, this means developers will not be able to develop apps for it, but only be able to send notifications to it. This works similarly to Android Wear, Google’s recently announced wearables platform. With Android Wear, developers won’t be able to build apps, but they can set what notifications and voice commands will appear on Android smartwatches.
