Well, it looks like Samsung finally managed to do what it has been trying to do for a painfully long time – the Korean manufacturer has made its first Tizen-powered phone official. Called the Samsung Z, the phone features a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display of 1280×720 resolution and is powered a quad-core 2.3GHz processor (most like a Snapdragon 800), and runs on version 2.2.1 of Tizen. The Z comes with a new look that should come as a breath of fresh air for those who have gotten bored of Samsung’s design language on Android devices (let’s face it, who hasn’t?), though the overall design seems to be along the same lines as the company’s previous efforts.
I want one of these, like, right now. Not only is it an alternative operating system backed by a huge player, it’s also very likely to become a rarity a few years down the line. A great and fascinating addition to my collection.
I wonder how much of Enlightenment trickled into Tizen knowing that Rasterman is working on it.
I highly doubt they’ll be using a Qualcomm 800 CPU, in fact I would bet money on it. Samsung is notorious for not using the most powerful CPU’s in their mid tier gear, whooh say that 10 times fast. Example; the Tab 3 8 contained a CPU that was introduced in late 2010 and was first used in the Tab 7.7. This contains a 720P display which should give us a hint on the caliber of CPU that will be used, it won’t be a slouch but no where near the speed of a Qualcomm 800.
I think Thom got it right when he said “it’s also very likely to become a rarity a few years down the line” I doubt this will go very far.
If Tizen or MozPhone wants to go anywhere they REALLY need to have a really good offering in the $150 and under USD price range and I just haven’t seen one yet. Both Android and WinPhone have really nice dual core offerings in this price range with the prepaid (as in no phone subsidy) phones and from what I understand this segment is growing as fast in Europe as it is the USA so they really need a decent phone in this range.
If they can do this? Then they have a REAL shot because many folks don’t LIKE the current offerings, they TOLERATE them. The current state of phone OSes reminds me of the 90s desktops, buggy, require reboots, unpredictable, the quality just isn’t there.
The design of it may be different than Samsung’s other devices, but it still looks just like an Android device that they slapped Tizen on.
Same curved arrow for the back button, same lines for a menu button, same elongated oval for the ‘home’ button.
Give me something like SailfishOS or MeeGo Harmattan, that has no front facing buttons!
Yes, sadly, the days when you don’t have a billion devices with the same operating system are all but over. It would have been nice if Nokia could have upgraded their Symbian line with more of the MeeGo bits, and gotten an N10, N11, or whatever they’d call them out.
I mean the N9 is ALMOST perfectly smooth with the hardware it was given. If it was running on the monstrosity that is my Note 3, it would fly! As it is, the Note 3 kind of chugs along at it’s own pace, because Android/TouchWiz is such a hog.
I bought a Note Pro 12.2″ as well, and that thing is constantly running out of memory, even though I have pretty much nothing running but some average things like Facebook. You can’t kill the really big memory hogs like TouchWiz, New York Times, etc… I’ve actually ran out of memory on it several times, and it has 3GB…
[quote]an alternative operating system backed by a huge player[/quote]
Except that huge player is Samsung. Based on my experience with the brilliant Kies software, I don’t think i ever want to use something written from scratch by Samsung again.
You are right.
Given the quality (actually, the lack of it) of Samsung’s bundled software in their Android line, that is their flagship so the one that has more R&D money, i really fear Samsung’s port of Tizen.
Samsung is decent with hardware development, but for software it has been consistently pathetic, going as far as theirs pre-Android phones up to today.
Looks like a Sony.
I’ll wait for the next Jolla instead.
Tizen had support from some big carriers, most importantly China Mobile. The carriers (like everyone else) seem to have lost interest now, but it did result in cozying up to Samsung, so I think Sammy comes out on top even if Tizen fails.
Tizen has support from many of the biggest hardware manufacturers including Intel and Huawei as well as global mega carrier Vodafone.
Any native Wayland drivers for the GPU?
Maybe this phone will be like my bluray player and have only a handful of apps (with the empty promise of more to come) that never get updated.
It’s ugly!
On the outside, it looks pretty much like the LG-L5 (either I or II) without the LED flash. There are a few differences on inside (Quad-core, more memory, screen resolution).
As a fashion statement – it ain’t ugly – maybe a bit outdated, passé!
However, unlike Thom, I don`t have the spare disposable money to acquire a curiosity. With sufficient spare time, I might be tempted to play although I would have to wait that some smart hacker finds a way to enable Tizen on the LG-L5.
Samsung, Samsung what have you done? You were given the keys to a state of the art OS and you slapped a facisimile of Android on it… Go stand in the corner, you unimaginitive dunce! Icons look almost to be copies of Meego’s.
A comparitively tiny team in Finland have shown spirit, courage, imagination, skill and beat you to Market by 7 months.. Step foward Jolla and take a bow.
I would love to benchmark Sailfish against Tizen on comparitive hardware, I have no doubts which would win.
Actually disappointment is wrong, i’m in a state of incredulity. They put a home and back key on Meego… shakes head walks away muttering.
Edited 2014-06-03 00:55 UTC
It’s a Touchwiz device. The GUI is designed to look like virtually every other Samsung phone built in the last few years. Tizen is an evolution of Meego.
Please show me a physical store where I can buy a Jolla phone.
Try any DNA store in Finland or Elisa stores in Estonia.
Or get it via Amazon in UK
Edited 2014-06-03 09:32 UTC
How about Kwik E Mart headquarters in the Himalayas? I’m sure that the other 99.95% of people in the world outside Finland and Estonia are interested.
I’ve been following the Tizen for about a year, mainly because they half-support an HTML5 API. I also saw them rumored to want to work with Firefox OS, which is 100% HTML5, but nothing seems to have come of that.
My feeling is that because they aren’t 100% committed to HTML5 and have some kind of oddball “native” API instead, they’ll never get much traction from native-type programmers (who are probably happy with whatever they’ve got) or HTML5 programmer (who won’t want to bother).
And like the Windows 8 phone, I think developers will have a hard time sorting out the message of which set of APIs to use and how to find out which ones are useful. I haven’t tried it myself, but I hear developers complaining about how hard it it to figure out Windows 8 Phone programming. So I suspect that Tizen developers will also be similarly confused.
I installed the Tizen SDK a few months ago and found it confusing and finally gave up on it. Pick an OS and stick to it! Having a device support two or more APIs has to create a certain amount of overhead.
That’s why I picked Firefox OS and I’m still sticking to it. The API is HTML5 with a few extras for phone stuff, and that’s it. Because the system is simple and fast, Mozilla can seriously consider creating a $25 phone. Low hardware requirements, great battery life.
Samsung has a lot of power, so I’m not predicting they will fail, but I’ll stick with my Pebble watch, which still gets a weeks use between charging.
I also wonder why Samsung isn’t just sticking with Android, except maybe they fear Android will a) make them pay $$ to Microsoft, or b) Oracle may sink Android for using Java.
In any case, these are interesting times for phone, tablet, and watch developers!
PS: If anyone wants to know what I do with Firefox OS, see my blog at http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com or *shameless plug* my book on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IZUYIGO.
If you’re already developing on the MS stack, Windows Phone 8 programming is not hard. If not, yes I’d expect a steep learning curve – but that applies to learning any new platform.
i just bought this instead.
http://www.zdnet.com/meet-flame-mozillas-170-firefox-os-phone-for-d…
I’m gunning for mozilla over samsung
I’m looking forward to a review, if you are so inclined. I’d love to see a user’s opinion of how well it works in the real world. I tried it on an old Nexus S last year, and it was a crash-happy unusable mess. I’m sure it’s improved by now.
So many articles saying that Tizen is used by Samsung to leverage pressure against Google, threatening to go Tizen if Google pushes them too much.
They finally released a Tizen phone, and it’s going to fail so miserably that I don’t know what will Samsung do afterwards.
It is nothing more than a technology demonstrator to get publicity for Tizen. Samsung will probably be quite happy with 10,000 sales.
Asian companies generally have very long term goals. Samsung is probably willing to spend a decade on developing a market for Tizen.