Developer puts CyanogenMod on Samsung Gear S watch

A developer has gotten Android 5.1 in the form of CyanogenMod up and running on a Samsung Gear S, a smartwatch that runs Tizen. The firmware is still barely functional and can therefore not yet be downloaded and installed.

The developer reports on XDA Developers that ‘almost nothing works’. Only the start-up, the touchscreen and the battery indicator function properly. Plus the screen won’t come back after turning it off and audio crashes the whole watch.

The Android port is possible because Samsung uses a Qualcomm soc in the Gear S. It is a Snapdragon 400, of which two processor cores are disabled. That’s a software trick; it is possible to re-enable them.

The developer got CM 12.1 on the watch through TWRP recovery and flashing a custom kernel, among other things. The custom rom is only possible on the mobile phone watch available in the Benelux, because other versions have a locked bootloader.

Should the Android port function bug-free, the Gear S is a fully functioning Android smartphone. The device has Wi-Fi and a SIM card slot, so users could actually use it as a stand-alone watch phone.

Samsung will soon come with a successor to the Gear S. The manufacturer will present the round Gear S2 at the IFA electronics fair, which will take place in Berlin at the beginning of September. The first Gear S came out last fall.