Here’s Wear OS running on 2016’s Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch [Gallery]

Ben Schoon | May 17 2022 - 12:52 pm PT

After running on its own Tizen operating system for the better part of a decade for smartwatches, Samsung finally embraced Google’s Wear OS last year. However, a clever developer has been able to install Wear OS on the Gear S3, Samsung’s 2016 smartwatch.

Samsung has been using “Galaxy Watch” as the branding for its smartwatch lineup since 2018, but before that was the “Gear” line, which consists primarily of two smartwatches, 2015’s Gear S2 which introduced the iconic rotating bezel, and 2016’s Gear S3, which really dialed in Samsung’s smartwatch prowess in the Android world.

Back in 2016, our review of the Gear S3 praised its build and health features, calling it the “smartwatch of the future.” We were pretty happy with the product overall, but even back then we noted how bad the “app gap” between Tizen and what was then Android Wear had been, not knowing that Samsung would eventually swap out the OS entirely as a result of that ongoing problem.

Fast forward to today, and a developer has successfully solved the problems that Tizen presented the Gear S3 by just installing Wear OS on it. As detailed in an XDA forum thread, this custom ROM for the Gear S3 delivers the latest form of Wear OS 2, the H MR3 update. For obvious reasons, Wear OS 3 can’t be ported just yet. The custom ROM is designed for the Gear S3 Frontier (SM-R760), but should also work for the Classic model as well. The LTE models are not supported.

What do you gain from the switch? With Wear OS on a Gear S3, Samsung’s smartwatch picks up support for Google Assistant, the Play Store and its plethora of apps and watchfaces, and more. The ROM even works with your Google account and all of Wear OS’ core functions. The rotating bezel even works, acting like the rotating crown seen on other watches.

What’s broken? As with any port, there are some problems. The Wear OS app sees this custom ROM as a TicWatch Pro 3 instead of a Gear S3, which isn’t really a problem as much as something you’ll need to know during setup. Battery life is said to be “poor” compared to Tizen. The charging animation constantly shows until you reboot as well, and some sensors are not working. The tilt-to-wake function is broken, as is GPS, NFC, and the step counter too.

It is, of course, at your own risk if you install this on your own device. But really, it’s amazing just to see the development community still showing interest in this aging hardware. The Gear S3 was a great smartwatch, and Wear OS might just make it even better for some folks.