back to article Meet Asteroid, a drop-in Linux upgrade for your unloved smartwatch

Asteroid, a Linux-based open-source wearable OS, formally reached a big milestone this week, and it might give Tizen a run for Samsung's money. Developed as a hobby by French Linux developer Florent Revest, Asteroid runs on a number of smartwatches that launched with Wear OS, formerly Android Wear. Considerable progress has …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll wait

    For Sailfish to become available for smart watches. It works extremely well on my phone and being free of the Big Bad Google feels very liberating.

    1. Ken 16 Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: I'll wait

      I'll wait until it has 10% or above market share, having been burnt by Bada and BB10.

  2. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

    "Apps are minimal, or hardly used at all."

    A year ago, before I had a smartwatch, I'd have mocked this statement mercilessly.

    Since then I've had a number of smartwatches; a Kingwear Tag-Heuer knockoff, a Fossil Q, a Microsoft Band 2, and my current Apple Watch. I can honestly say that although I've downloaded a fair few apps, the number I actually use (outside the preloaded ones) can be counted on the fingers of Captain Hook's bad hand.

    1. hodma727

      Apple Watch apps

      Until my birthday earlier this year I was using a Mi Band 2 and found it wonderful for the battery life, notifications and alarms, and sleep + exercise tracking. I still think it is bloody good bang-for-buck value.

      I'd seen the pain friends had with fitbits and their crap app support, especially how useless they become with older phones, so thought I'd made a good choice, and thought the Apple watch seemed pointless.

      Then my girlfriend bought me an Apple watch and I actually started to use it.

      I have to say it's damn useful.

      Little things like having my upcoming calendar entries on my wrist, being able to say "Hey Siri, remind me when I get to work to do whatever" or "when I leave the office to pick up milk", Hey Siri, play playlist "never skipped" to play songs I've not skipped before, or "text John Winters I'll be 10 minutes late" "pause music" - Siri is awsome and so much better than the voice recognition build into my new Jeep that I leave that off. And having it on my wrist? Pure gold.

      Being able to easily find my phone by swipping up and clicking on the phone icon to make my phone make a find me noise, having a nightlight on my wrist (swipe up, click torch icon), Shazam to recognise music for me, answer phone calls without having to drag out my phone, seeing where friends are on my watch, recording voice reminders, replying to texts by voice to text, seeing how charged my phone currently is on my watch, travel logging, voice recordings, notification of what my Xiao Mi Vaccum is up to, sleep tracking with AutoSleep, etc etc.

      I have hundreds of apps on my iPhone and use a good 50 of them regularly, I have 16 on my Apple Watch that I use regularly, and I guess I use about half of the built-in apps on a regular basis too.

      That's not bad going considering I've only had this watch a few months now.

      If you have an Apple watch and don't use apps you're missing a lot.

      1. D@v3

        Re: Apple Watch apps

        I've had my apple watch (3, Nike) for a few weeks now, brought to replace my Pebble Time that was getting progressively more screwy.

        I haven't found the need for many apps(other than the built in), but i expect that will change with time. Only one that i have looked for and not been able to find a suitable option is a basic compass (which i had on the pebble).

        Generally speaking, I'm finding it great. Nice to be able to go to the gym without my phone but still listen to the playlist i have synched to it. I'm finding Apple pay much less jarring to use than i expected (and better than taking my phone out to use it).

  3. K

    Garmin rock, but for the budget conscious

    Go check out Amazfit Stratos..

    1. Naich

      Re: Garmin rock, but for the budget conscious

      Budget, you say? If you want a budget smartwatch look at the DZ-09 for less than a tenner.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Garmin rock, but for the budget conscious

      I use my androidwear SW3, it's superb. When anyone asked me if it's an Apple watch, i just laugh at them and walk off... It's looks better, is more functional (local storage and GPS) than an Apple watch, has more apps, and costs a fraction of the price. It looks way better too, the silicon is great for sports (fully waterproof of course), the metal and leather straps look really stylish (for a smart watch)

      https://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/styles/xlarge/public/article_images/2015/01/smartwatch3stainless.jpg?itok=Vvw1l6Tf

      https://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/166316-thumb/SW3-Leather-Strap-ef65e768a095713ae90095df6de7d223-e1423481416903.jpg

      1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

        Re: Garmin rock, but for the budget conscious

        Glad you like your SW3; probably not the best idea to compare it to Apple Watch though, given that they're equivalent in many ways (and where they're not, Apple Watch comes out ahead).

        They both have GPS.

        They're both waterproof.

        The SW3 cost $200 at launch. Not exactly cheap (although it does look it).

        Re 'Functional' - I see your local storage and raise you the App Store. Horses for courses, but in the time I owned an Apple Watch 2 (4GB) I never filled up more than about 350MB. How many apps and songs do you need on your wrist?

        Transflective LCD isn't even close to OLED.

        I'm not a fan of square screens (not even Apple's) - but putting Android Wear on a square-faced watch is just crazy - it's supported by exactly nobody. Not even Sony any more.

        Second hand retail - the Apple Watch 1 goes for GBP150 second hand now. The 1st gen still more than GBP100. The SW3? GBP20-30.

        You say it looks better - it's subjective, but I think it looks like a cheap Chinese knockoff. And if you're going to go that route, do it properly and get a Kingwear; 40 quid will get you a new one.

  4. Spanners Silver badge
    Happy

    Alternative

    "Apps are minimal, or hardly used at all."

    That is why I have a FitBit. It does exactly what it says on the box and cannot be slowed down by me adding more stuff.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Alternative

      > That is why I have a FitBit. It does exactly what it says on the box

      Does the box really say "all your data are belong to us"?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Alternative

      Shitbit as my wife calls them, the return rate inner shop is HUGE. over half come back with OTB faults or faults within 30 days.

  5. James 51

    Pebble had plenty of apps through I used precious few. Still hanging onto my steel for the forseeable future.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

    What's the state of play with real time micro-kernal OSs?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

      And why aren't there Linux distros for phone hardware? I'm sick of having Google listening in on everything.....

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

        Well, Ubuntu touch, which was dropped by Canonical, has got a second life as a community supported Linux Phone OS, although it does still use the Android kernel.

        If your phone is not already on the support list (and I admit it's not huge), there are people who will help you attempt a port.

      2. pakman

        Re: And why aren't there Linux distros for phone hardware?

        It is really hard to get open systems to work properly on phone hardware for all sorts of reasons, partly to do with the closed nature of a lot of the hardware subsystems and their drivers. I'm not an expert, but I sometimes follow discussions by people who know a lot about this and the number of bumps in the road makes my eyes water. x86-based systems are easy in comparison. There are a couple of Linux challengers, check out Sailfish OS and the upcoming Librem 5 from Purism. There is also the Gemini from Planet Computers: it ships with Android at the moment but Debian and Sailfish OS have been demo-ed on it and promised to ship in the near future. I use Sailfish OS as my daily phone OS, and it certainly isn't problem free, but I put up with its quirks.

        As a daily Linux user, I do get a warm feeling from logging in to my phone with ssh now and again and using commands like 'systemctl' ;-)

      3. Charles 9

        Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

        "And why aren't there Linux distros for phone hardware? I'm sick of having Google listening in on everything....."

        A lot of phone hardware is black-boxed. Not even Google gets to know all the juicy details. They just get binary blobs to interface their stuff with Android. ARM-based devices like this weren't built with enumerated buses in mind for the internal hardware (unlike in the computer world where stuff like PCI and so on took hold).

        TL;DR version: It's hard to build a linux kernel for a system whose internals are considered trade secrets.

        1. Gene Cash Silver badge

          Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

          > It's hard to build a linux kernel for a system whose internals are considered trade secrets

          And thus, in a nutshell why I don't have a smartwatch. I only wear my current watch for extremely sentimental reasons.

          I don't specially like Android, except the alternative is Apple, and I need my PDA stuff.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

        "I'm sick of having Google listening in on everything"

        Please cite....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is Linux the best starting place for a watch OS?

      > What's the state of play with real time micro-kernal [sic] OSs [sic]?

      I would have thought an embedded device is about the worst place where to put a microkernel.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    "Privacy has been a design consideration. And because it's actually a rich Linux, you can run Docker."

    wtf?

  8. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

    Qt > Enlightenment, but we knew this already.

    As both are Linux-based, the most significant difference between AsteroidOS and Tizen is the application framework used for apps.

    Qt 5, including QML/QtQuick, is the preferred framework on AsteroidOS, which explains how a small team of developers has managed to bring up such a polished UI in so short a time period.

    Tizen, meanwhile, pushes developers to use Enlightenment. And if ever a framework was ironically named...

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Qt > Enlightenment, but we knew this already.

      The bad news is Samsung still haven't refactored Enlightenment into C++.

      However the good news is that Samsung have finally decided to wrap an object-orientated language around the original ancient psuedo-object orientated void-*-everywhere clusterfuck.

      And the bad news is they chose C# on Xamarin.

  9. 89724105618719271590214I9405670349743096734346773478647852349863592355648544996313855148583659264921

    Christ I hate Android leaking my life...

    ...Good job the OnePlus One can be Penguined up:

    https://ubports.com

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Beware of cheap Smartwatch OS's

    A local advertiser in my area purchased over 100,000 "smart" watches to be used in a giveaway.

    The QR code printed on the manual linked to this lovely OS:

    https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/bbecc97a014cdc09cd0a8e6f65affd86e393976ea656322c183ad8e5e52f6d3d/detection

  11. DenTheMan

    Cue the adverts

    Yet the most useful things are undoubtably unstated!

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