The Gear Fit shuns all “main-stream” operating systems

Mar 26, 2014 14:07 GMT  ·  By

As you probably know by now, Samsung’s original wearable the Galaxy Gear ran Android, while the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo marked a shift in the company’s approach when it came to smartwatches.

The Korean tech giant dropped the “Galaxy” branding to highlight the choice of stepping away from the Android platform and taking up its own Tizen OS, which is still in its infancy.

But what about the Gear Fit? According to Samsung officials, the fitness-centric wearable offers a premiere of its own. As SamMobile reports, the Gear Fit uses a real-time operating system or RTOS, so it’s not part of the Android family nor the Tizen.

Anyway, RTOS is a very simple platform designed to be able to tackle a finite list of specific tasks. Apparently, the OS is also capable of processing data without much delay and as company officials explain, this tweak allows them to push the Gear Fit’s battery life up to three or four days.

The Gear Fit will be used to keep tabs on heart rate and count steps; therefore, the results should be quite specific in order to bring about any real health benefits. So if we look at things this way, using RTOS is advantageous for receiving accurate data.

The negative part is that developers won’t be able to contribute with any apps to the Gear Fit, nor will we see any SDK being launched for the fitness tracker. Whether that will constitute a draw-back it remains to be seen, since the Gear Fit will act and be used differently than a smartwatch.