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Smartwatches are digital watches that have more features than a time tracking device. Its function is similar to mobile device with touch screen display. The smartwatch is said to be a remote to the phone. It can be used as a virtual assistant to phone or tablets. The early models only perform calculations, game playing etc. But now it is effectively used as a wearable computer. The companies that are engaged in smartwatch development activities are Acer, Apple, BlackBerry, Foxconn, Google, LG, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba etc. The watch industry will grow because of the smartwatch technology. It is expected that approximately 1.6 billion watches will be sold in 2020.
SmartWatch
Some features of smart watches are given below.
Smartwatch are built in different size and shapes. It supports human machine interaction. The user can interact with the watch using gesture control, voice commands etc. The four primary operating system that dominate in the smartwatch market are Android, Android Wear, Tizen, Linux. iOS based smartwatch will be released soon. Media Linklt OS is also upcoming wearables. The dominant operating system mostly used now days are Android Wear and Apple Watch OS. Because of the lack of applications, Tizen cannot compete with the others and so it cannot last long. Linklt is low cost device which may have the possibility of dominate. But cannot dominate in western markets. Linux code is stolen by other manufactures.
The most important component in wearable operating system is Kernel. It is the interface between the hardware and software. It determines how hardware solves various software tasks, power management etc. The Kernel work with a specific range of hardware. The Google Wear works with the same hardware as Linux. The Android wear steals its hardware from Linux Kernel.
Some of the hardware is given as follows:-
Google has officially getting into wearables. The company has announced Android wear. There are so many key features. One of the features is fitness. It will give the real time speed, information about distance and time about user’s run, walk etc. Another feature is Google map. Using this, it is possible to find the directions from the smartwatch itself. Automatic or passive remainders can send to the user via smartwatch. The watch is also connected with the Android smart phones. So it helps to get all notifications that the users want from apps which is installed in the smart phone. Fossil and other brands offer watches using operating systems will be released in future. Figure below shows fossil wrist PDA running Palm OS.
Android Wear
Android wear is a version of the operating system that is specially designed for wearable devices. It is the fastest growing operating system. Android wear operating system is designed to be paired with Android smartphones (version 4.3 and above). It is available as an open source. Android wear screen supports both rectangular and round screens. ARM Cortex A, MIPS and x86 or any device that supports Linux Kernel can be used. At present Cortex A processor is used. Android wear supports more than thousand applications. But actually it supports only fewer applications which provide advanced functionality from the watch itself. The Android Wear is enabled only if it is paired with an Android device. It supports voice recognition.
Android Wear and Android are two distinct products.Android as a wearable OS is similar to Android Wear. It shares codes with each other. The difference from Android Wear is that Android doesn’t have the ability to push apps into a paired smartphone. It doesn’t support Bluetooth pairing with other Android devices. The devices that support Android are Samsung Galaxy Gear and Neptune Pine. Actually the Android is not designed for wearables. However most Android support wearables . It provides full smartphone functionality and fitness tracking. The chipsets used in Android wearables are ARM Cortex A, MIPS etc. It has a library with lot of applications.
MediaTek announced Linklt operating system in 2014. It is not an open source operating system. Instead of using smartphone chip, the Linklt operating system designed Aster system-on-a-Chip (Soc). This chip is highly efficient and smaller than smartphone chips. It can be paired with all devices that use MediaTek’s Aster SoC. It has many advantages like low power consumption, low cost etc makes this different from their competitors. The battery life is estimated to be 4 days with normal use. The disadvantage of this device is that it has poor graphics quality.
It is a Linux kernel based open source operating systems. It is used to provide complete community based alternative for mobile devices. This operating system is based on Firefox operating system. The Firefox applications are developed using web based technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript etc. It is designed to run on low cost wearable such as smartwatches and smart devices such as smart TV etc. This operating system is not released yet. Its future plan is to pair with all mobile platforms such as Firefox OS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone etc. This OS will be adopted by chineese smartphone makers Huawei and ZTE.Figure below shows the Bambook Smart Watch run on Firefox OS that is expected to released. It is mainly concentrated on e-readers. Shanda is one of the largest hardware, software and gaming companies in China.
Smartwatch
The Watch OS is running only in Apple Watch. It is designed to be paired with Apple products only like above iOS 8.2 devices. It mainly concentrated on iPhones. It cannot run applications in standalone mode. It will run the app on the smartphone and small extension resides on the watch itself. The Apple designed a chipset Apple S1 system-on-a-chip. It offers better battery life while compared to other Android Wear devices. It supports fitness tracking using HealthKit software. It is not ann open source. The Apple Watches are expensive. The figure below shows the Apple Watch.
This operating system is developed by Intel, Samsung, Vodafone, and Orange. The lightweight version of operating system is called Tizen for wearable. It is developed by Samsung which is also developed Android wear smartwatches. Most of the Samsung devices are not compatible with Tizen. So it can only paired with few Samsung devices. But it supports the latest and most popular Android wearables such as Samsung Gear S, Samsung Gear 2, and Samsung Gear 2 Neo etc. Tizen include software called Samsung Architecture for Multinodal Interaction (SAMI) which have similar feature like Apple’s HealthKit. Samsung offers fitness tracking applications. ARM Cortex M is used as processor. It has very long battery life.Tizen for wearables is an open source operating system. It can run the standalone apps. It doesn’t require any connection with the host app on the smartphone. This is the unique feature of these smartwatches while comparing with the others. It can run integrated and link apps. It is developed using HTML5. More than 10000 applications are available in Tizen store. The figure below shows the Tizen smartwatches.
The Linux derived OS dominate smaller and larger wearables. The Linux Kernel supports virtually all chipsets such as ARM Cortex M, ARM Cortex A, MIPS etc. It is an open source operating system. The manufactures do not reveal anything about the custom operating system. Many manufactures do not make code contributions to Linux. So many companies steal code from Linux. Android, Android Wear, Tizen, etc uses the Linux Kernel. It cannot recognize voice commands. It has a long battery life.
This operating system is developed by Pebble Technology Corporation. FreeRTOS is a real time OS which is used for embedded systems. Pebble OS is a version of FreeRTOS. It can be paired with iOS and Android smartphones. It provides integrated notifications and activity tracking. It also supports Android wear notifications. It has a very long battery life. Pebble’s first smartwatch model is the first smartwatch in world to shift 1 Million units. More than 6000 applications are available. Figure below shows a watch run on Pebble OS . The user read a message from his smartwatch.
This OS was developed by Palm. The aim is to run on smartphones. But it is used in the wearables developed by LG. LG is also creating Android wear based smartwatches. This OS is also used in smart devices such as smart TV, washing machine etc. The WebOS is based on web technologies. It can run completely standalone. That is the smart watch can also be used as a smart phone by inserting a SIM into the watch. The figure below shows the smart watch developed by LG using WebOS.
Tencent own the largest instant messaging app Wechat and social network. The Tencent specially designed an operating system to produce smartwatch is called Tencent Operating System TOS+. TOS+ is not only operating in smartwatch, but also in smart devices like smart TV etc. It will support communication, health and music applications. It supports voice commands. It has some additional features such as reservation booking, calling transportation/taxi services. It allows answering calls, view messages and email etc. In future, Tencent OS based products will be released. Tencent has no plan to make hardware themselves. They work with some manufactures to produce the devices.
The Fitbit’s activity trackers do not have any operating system. Garmin smartwatches run in an open platform called Connect IQ. Fitbit and Garmin smartwatches can be paired with iOS, Android, Windows Phone. Fitbit is one of the pioneers in fitness band. The figures of Fitbit and Garmin given below.
The Band is developed by Microsoft. It doesn’t have an operating system run on the device. But it has built in software which is a kind of OS agnostic. It can run the apps using the Microsoft’s Wearable Architecture which is paired on iOS, Android, Windows and Windows Phone . The unique feature of Band is that it consists of 10 sensors which are supported by Band software.
Majority of wearables other than Google, Samsung and Apple use embedded Linux. They are not custom written operating system. Some operating systems are given below.
Linux: - The Linux OS is mostly used operating system in many wearable devices. The Android, Android Wear, Tizen use Linux Kernel.
BSD: - Berkeley’s BSD’s Kernel is also used in wearable devices.
GNU: - In hardware , the second most widely used operating system is GNU’s Kernel .
Mach: - It is a part of which powers Apples wearables. It may power other wearables in the future.
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