Capitalizing on the lack of an open source operating system for smartwatches, Florent Revest, a French computer science student, envisaged a project named AsteroidOS. After four years of extensive development and contribution in SDK from more than 100 contributors all over the world, AsteroidOS has launched its first stable version v1.0.
Supported Hardware
This Linux-based OS is regarded as a giant leap in open source industry. Initially, the OS was available just for LG G Watch but the newly released version extends the support to six more devices, including LG G Watch Urbane, LG G Watch R, Asus Zenwatch 1, Asus Zenwatch 2, Asus Zenwatch 3 and Sony Smartwatch 3.
Features of AsteroidOS
Like other contemporary Watch OS available today, AsteroidOS 1.0 is equipped with all the features one can demand in this era of smartwatches. The features include phone notifications, an alarm clock, an agenda, a timer, a stopwatch, a music remote control, option for customizing settings, options of watch faces and a weather forecast application.
The Watch OS does not support third-party apps yet, but in future updates, you can expect the support for installing third party apps along with always-on feature, calendar synchronization, and neatly organized notifications.
The aforementioned existing features can be synced with Android devices with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) via AsteroidOSSync application. The option of customization is also provided to encourage developers for creating a new watch face.
Ample of Options for Customization
Based on standard Linux technologies such as Wayland, OpenEmbedded, Qt5, opkg, BlueZ, systemd and PulseAudio, AsteroidOS extends plethora of customization options to build new apps for OS, and existing applications can also be ported to platforms such as utilities and desktop games.
Global Reach
Since this is rolled out globally, therefore, the OS can be translated into 20 different languages Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Kabyle, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. More languages can also be accessed online.
What Can We Expect in Future Updates?
The current version of WatchOS contains nothing fancy and is not ready yet to compete with popularly available smartwatch OS such as Google’s Wear OS, WebOS and Apple’s watchOS.
However, rapid developments in AsteroidOS and interests shown by developers all around the world to promote the open source smartwatch OS indicates that the future of AsteroidOS is bright and prospering.
