14 DAY TRIAL // Four years in the works, AsteroidOS, the open-source operating system for smartwatches powered by Google's Wear OS (formerly Android Wear) operating system, is now ready for the masses.
Started as a one-man show more than four years ago, the AsteroidOS open wearable platform is now considered stable and ready for deployment on production smartwatches with the 1.0 release announced today, thanks to the hard work from more than 100 contributions from all over the world.
"When I first started, I never imagined how big this project would become and the quantity of work required to reach a stable version for daily usage. Today, it is my great pleasure to finally announce the availability of AsteroidOS 1.0, the first stable release of this project," said the AsteroidOS developer.
AsteroidOS 1.0 highlights and supported devices
Being the first stable release of the open-source operating system for smartwatches, AsteroidOS 1.0 comes with a set of default apps for general use, including an agenda, an alarm clock, a calculator, a timer, a stopwatch, a music remote control app, a weather forecast app, as well as phone notifications and settings customizations.
It also includes an app called AsteroidOSSync that helps you synchronize the features of your AsteroidOS-powered smartwatch with your Android smartphone through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, and offers a highly customizable smartwatch experience where anyone can create new watch faces.
At the moment, AsteroidOS 1.0 works with the Asus Zenwatch 1, Asus Zenwatch 2, Asus Zenwatch 3, LG G Watch, LG G Watch Urbane, LG G Watch R, and Sony Smartwatch 3 devices. An emulator, SDK, examples, and tutorials are also included in this release, which is fully translated in 20 languages.
Under the hood, AsteroidOS is powered by open-source and GNU/Linux technologies like the OpenEmbedded operating system, PulseAudio sound system, Wayland display server, BlueZ Bluetooth stack, Wayland display server, Qt5 application framework, systemd init system, and OPKG package manager.
AsteroidOS is designed as a drop-in replacement for Wear OS or Android Wear smartwatches, which means that you won't be able to run both on your watch. To get started with AsteroidOS 1.0, visit the official website for detailed installation instructions for each of the supported smartwatch models.
