With Samsung ditching Tizen, here's when your Galaxy Watch still stop receiving updates

By Ara Wagoner
published

WADD Secundus Watch Active Watch Face
WADD Secundus Watch Active Watch Face (Image credit: Ara Wagoner / Android Central)

What you need to know

  • As part of Samsung's announcement of moving to Wear OS, it re-affirmed its support for current Tizen watches.
  • Samsung has promised at least three years of support life for existing Galaxy Watches and Galaxy Watch Actives.

Today's news about Samsung joining Wear OS is a long time coming, and while this could mean the beginning of a beautiful wearable friendship, it also marks the end of an era for Samsung smartwatches and for Tizen. While there is still a lot we don't know about how Wear OS will actually perform on the Galaxy Watch 4, we now know why some Galaxy Watch and Watch active users will have a little more incentive to upgrade:

"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. 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."

This came from Samsung's statement on today's partnership with Google on wearables, and from that statement, we can infer an expected end-of-life date for each of the Galaxy Watches:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Watch NameLaunch dateMiminmum months remaining
Samsung Galaxy WatchAugust 24, 20183 months
Samsung Galaxy Watch ActiveMarch 8, 201910 months
Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2September 27, 201916 months
Samsung Galaxy Watch 3August 6, 202027 months

The original Galaxy Watch is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I still wear a Galaxy Watch Active most days. given the words "at least" in Samsung's guidance here and the fact that the Galaxy Watch 1 and 2 are very similar, I could see the first gen being supported as long as the second gen. Meanwhile, the Galaxy Watch 3 has most of its three-year support life ahead of it, and no, Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy Watch 3 will not be updated to Wear OS.

Are you happy to see three years of support for your Galaxy Watch model? Were you expecting more considering how long-lived most Samsung smartwatches have been? Can't wait for August to get your hands on the first Wear OS-powered Galaxy Watches? Me, too! Let us know in the comments.

Ara Wagoner
Ara Wagoner

Ara Wagoner was a staff writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes YouTube Music with a stick. When she's not writing about cases, Chromebooks, or customization, she's wandering around Walt Disney World. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.

18 Comments
  • Annoyed ....just go this galaxy watch and no upgrade to wearOS!
  • Same here, that's me done with Samsung time to move elsewhere as a Samsung fan for last 6/7 years I don't like the direction they are going so it's best to just go elsewhere.
  • Man, this is the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile. What!? No Tizen OS….then they can get ahhht. Whew lad. *wipes single tear
  • Dafuq are you on about? 🤔
  • My feelings as well. I just got the Samsung Galaxy Watch3 in December 2020.
  • What will happen to samsung pay? Here in Sweden more banks support samsung pay then Google pay
  • My hope is that both will be supported on Wear the same way both are supported on your phone.
  • They better be!
  • I would consider the newer watches if they still came with MST and Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay is the one reason I still use my LTE Gear S3 classic in 2021.
  • MST just needs to die fast in the minority of places that still insist in using it and get with the program
  • But MST works on credit card terminals that don't accept mobile payment. Why would you want to get rid of a technology like that? There are still many places, even in the USA that don't accept mobile/nfc payment.
  • Everything I touch dies, I just got the galaxy watch active 2 with tizen a couple of months ago because I was so frustrated with wear OS. And now it's gone.
  • Same here. I'm disappointed
  • I mean, it'd have been great if they were going to update my original Galaxy Watch to the new Wear but I wasn't expecting that. I'll be watching the GW4 very closely and hoping it works well, so I can upgrade. Luckily Samsung finally pushed out a big update to the GW1 to bring it to OneUI 2.5 and seemingly fixed a lot of weird and annoying bugs.
  • This is good and bad but it seem that Samsung is abandoning their existing Galaxy Watch customers, it seems I came to Samsung at the wrong time with a lot of their decisions being ridiculous and very Apple esque.
  • Agreed about being like Apple.
  • All this end of life stuff on tech is so ridiculous and self serving to the OEM's. Only in these times can companies get away with this BS. Imagine one's car EOL in a predetermined time irrespective of maintenance. Pathetic, especially on a device that's main purpose is to tell you what time it is or that you have a message from the device buzzing in your pocket. Let alone the massive e waste all these self serving companies pretend to care about. (They don't or we would have had long term software commitments, replaceable batteries and modular longer lasting devices years ago)
  • Well. This stinks. I hate wear os. No wonder they are working on a samsung exclusive version of Google Messages. I hate both! Samsung Messages still has features Google doesn't. Same with Tizen. They better figure out a way to integrate the new wear os watches as deeply as the time ones. Hopefully they still run through the galaxy Wearable app!