Samsung powers phone, TV with Tizen

Samsung`s new Tizen is all set to take on Google as the South Korean hardware manufacturer took its homemade OS to a new level this week.

The company has announced two new products – the 4.8 inch Samsung Z; and the Tizen TV, that will run based on its new operating system which it has been developing for several years now.

The Google powered Galaxy series has been the main spinner for Samsung but the company has been working for years together to develop its new OS. It first introduced Tizen in its smartwatch - the Gear 2, and this week’s announcements will be a clear attempt to test its potential and could determine Samsung’s future course of association with Google.

From the software perspective the user interface looks somewhat like that of the Galaxy series but with a Windows phone overlay because of its box like icons.

With no Android in it, users will have to live without the Android play store or the popular collection of Apps. But if Nokia through its X and BlackBerry in its Z10 series could enables Android apps, Tizen could well go along a similar path no sooner.

The Samsung Z will be the first commercially available smartphone powered by the Tizen platform and will be on show at the Tizen Developer Conference, San Francisco from June 3rd.

With regard to the hardware Samsung has built its new device with a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and a 2.3 GHz Quad-core processor, fingerprint sensor, 8MP camera, 2GB RAM and 16GB internal memory. The phone weighs 136 grams and comes with a 2600mAh battery.

Meanwhile in yet another indication that Tizen would not be just limited to the smartphone segment, Samsung announced the Tizen TV.

The Tizen TV allows you to connect to the web thereby transforming it into a second screen. Samsung also said that it would soon release Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK, allowing developers to build applications for the Tizen-based TV.

The SDK Beta that will be made available early July supports the HTML5 standard through its framework called Caph and enables developers to write apps that run on a Tizen OS –based TVs.

“We are excited to offer app developers the opportunity to experience this new platform in advance with the release of Beta SDK,” said YoungKi Byun, Vice President of Visual Display Business S/W R&D Team, Samsung Electronics. “With the ultimate goal of expanding the TV ecosystem for apps, we will continue our efforts to provide innovative functions and improve the development environment.”

According to Samsung the SDK will allow developers to virtually see all necessary TV functions without a physical TV. Developers can also remotely modify code on their PCs with the new debugging feature.

The Tizen-based Samsung TV SDK Beta also features various scenarios including Smart Interaction, allowing users to control their TVs with simple hand gestures and voice commands; and multi-screen, which can be used to link a TV with various devices including mobile and wearable gadgets.

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