Galaxy Watch Name Confirmed In Samsung Trademark Filing, Bixby 2.0 Reportedly Onboard

by Brandon Hill — Wednesday, July 11, 2018, 10:32 AM EDT

Last week we revealed that Samsung's upcoming flagship smartwatch release could ditch the homegrown Tizen operating system in favor or Google's Wear OS. Today, we're learning about what the device will actually be called, and according to a fresh report, it will fall under the "Galaxy" umbrella like the company's popular smartphones and tablets.

Samsung registered Galaxy Watch branding with the Korean Intellectual Property Office and has taken similar action with the USPTO. While aligning its smartwatches with the Galaxy branding isn't exactly a foreign concept, the idea that Samsung is adopting Wear OS for its smartwatches is somewhat surprising.

gear s3 watches — Samsung Gear S3 Frontier (Left), Gear S3 Classic (Right)

Samsung specifically developed its Tizen operating system as a way to avoid restrictions that Google puts in place with Android and to have more control over every aspect of software design. Samsung has launched both smartphones and smartwatches powered by Tizen, but the fledgling operating system doesn't have the broad reach or app support afforded by Android.

In other Galaxy Watch news, it's been confirmed that the smartwatch will feature Samsung's Bixby 2.0 digital assistant. Bixby is Samsung's answer to counterparts like the Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri, and has been integrated into Samsung's most recent Galaxy devices (a la Galaxy S8/S9 and Galaxy Note 8). According to SamMobile, Bixby will be invoked on the Galaxy Watch by pressing the home button.

It is widely expected that Bixby 2.0 will debut alongside the Galaxy Note 9 when it launches on August 9^th. Bixby 2.0 is expected to support more natural speech recognition and faster response times compared to its predecessor.

Tags: Samsung, tizen, (krx:005930), bixby, bixby 2.0, galaxy watch

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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