Tizen running handset caught on video

Tizen is a name that seems to be picking up speed in the smartphone domain. We first heard of it back in September of 2011, as a project that was being developed by two major Linux software groups - Samsung and Intel. With Samung’s Bada almost on its way out, the Korean company has decided to try yet another new OS to beat the competition. The marriage between LiMo and MeeGo that’s been dubbed Tizen, is in the works and and will compete on a much wider base in a market dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s closed source iOS based iPhones.

New hardware for their new software

Samsung being the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer at the moment are having another go at creating an OS that may attract a huge majority of the consumers. An all new open-source OS, Tizen is designed to support multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and Samsung’s own Smart TVs as well as in-car infotainment systems.

Samsung has already released the SDK and source code for Tizen v1.0 Larkspur a while back and they expect developers to start working on designing apps soon since both are specifically designed for developing and testing of apps. The SDK and source code includes a browser-based simulator for running and debugging web apps and an improved emulator. Samsung have given out reference hardware at the Tizen Developer Conference around which it expects the developers to design the apps. The device features a 4.3-inch screen with a 1024x720 pixels display and a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM processor.

Below is a video of the Tizen reference hardware device.

As it is just an initial release of the OS, it doesn’t have too many apps bundled along with it, not even one of the camera. The UI looks similar to TouchWiz and also features a pull down notification status bar and power widget. There’s a home button on the notification bar, which can be accessed on any screen. Pressing it will take you back to the homescreen. There also is a physical home button, just like all other Samsung phones. Long pressing the home button also lets you access the task manager and recent apps, which again is just like Google’s existing Android platform. There’s even an onscreen back key at the bottom.

This phone running Tizen supports NFC and has Facebook, Twitter and Samsung’s AllShare app inbuilt. The web browser on this device is designed to further optimize the user experience of the mobile web and has the highest HTML5 score in comparison to any other browsers. The device itself looks interesting enough, but is obviously rather simple.

From the looks of it Tizen has really good and smooth flowing transition effects thanks to the 1.2GHz dual core chip.

Naturally our curiosity is piqued and we’re anxious to see what the final device would look like. With Samsung’s Galaxy III making the rounds right now though, it’s possible that Tizen could be overshadowed for a while. Stay tuned to this space for more updates on the new smartdevice OS Tizen.