With Android Wear 2.0 delays and uncertainty of what will happen to Pebble OS if Pebble gets snapped up by Fitbit, Finnish startup Jolla is playing with the idea of bringing its Sailfish operating system to the smartwatch.
The Linux-based, gesture-centric operating system developed by former Nokia and Intel employees has previously appeared on smartphones and tablets but didn’t exactly set the world alight. As part of a case study, the team has ported its Sailfish OS to an LG Watch Urbane Android Wear watch to showcase what the platform could offer.
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The short video below demonstrates how you would be able to bypass any physical buttons, tapping and swiping your way through the user interface to do things like view fitness tracking activity, make a call and transfer a call from the watch to your smartphone.
Taking technical and design inspiration from Asteroid OS, an existing open source smartwatch operating system, it also incorporates key elements of the Sailfish OS including a horizontal carousel, ambiences (essentially stylish themes) as well as accessing apps from the bottom of the screen.
For the prototype Jolla used Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth to pair the smartwatch to a phone to reduce the time it would take to port the OS onto an Android Wear watch.
As we’ve already mentioned, Jolla is not committing to making its Sailfish OS a fully fledged smartwatch platform just yet, but when operating systems from Apple, Samsung, Google and the rest are still very much works in progress, maybe Jolla has the potential to offer a simple yet sleek alternative.
Do you like the look of Jolla’s watch OS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Source: Jolla and PocketNow
SOURCE:http://www.wareable.com/smartwatches/jolla-sailfish-watch-release-date-specs-price-3597
