Details of Samsung's Tizen smartphones surface

According to the Greek Tizen community, details about Samsung's two new smartphones that will be running on its Tizen operating system have emerged. The

Shunal Doke|May 08, 2013, 10:43:46 IST

According to the Greek Tizen community, details about Samsung's two new smartphones that will be running on its Tizen operating system have emerged thanks to listings on the Samsung Tizen Store. The handsets are the GT-I8800, dubed Melius, and the GT-I8805, dubbed Redwood. The two handsets appear to be running on Tizen version 2.1, named Magnolia. They are slated to be available later this year.

The Redwood is set to be a 4G-ready phone, which means that it will have an LTE chip. The Melius lacks an LTE chip, so it will only be capable of accessing 3G speeds. Both handsets are expected to hit store shelves in September.

Screenshots of the Tizen OS (image credit: SamMobile)

Samsung and Intel are among a total of 12 companies pushing forward the development of Tizen, which will be an alternative to the most prominent open source mobile OS, Android. It will also go up against newbie open source OSes like Firefox OS, Ubuntu for mobile and SailFishOS.

There currently are no Tizen devices available in the market, but Chase Perrin, an official with the Tizen Association, said the first phone will have no dearth of applications to choose from. “Android, among other mobile operating systems, is tightly controlled,” Perrin said. “As an open-source software platform, Tizen is designed to make it easy to develop for a range of devices.”

More from News Analysis

Tizen is capable of running all Android apps that are currently available on the Google Play Store thanks to the Application Compatibility Layer (ACL) running underneath. The OS is being developed by the companies that are part of the Tizen Foundation and the first device will likely launch on Japan’s NTT DoCoMo network. Samsung earlier showed off the reference device running the OS at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and had, before that, released the 2.0 SDK for developers to get a taste of the OS and to expedite app development.

By Shunal Doke

Ever heard of one of those people who just never seem to shut up about something? Shunal is like the nerd equivalent of that guy. Believe us when we say that he can go on talking about games and smartphones for hours on end. We do manage to find some insight in his insane ramblings though, and through his moronic facade, he does seem to know more than he lets on. Sadly enough, it always ends up being about gaming with him. Or stupid, stupid puns.