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Samsung: Please, somebody, make mobile apps for Tizen
Samsung is eager to get developers to build applications for its Tizen smartphones. In an effort to drive up interest, the company has created the Tizen Mobile App Incentive Program, which will offer $9 million in cash prizes from February through October of 2017. According to Samsung, devs with apps that end up in the top 100 chart can earn $10,000 per app -- definitely not a bad way to lure people in. Those who want to participate in the program can register starting in "early" January.
Samsung keeps Tizen smartphone dreams alive with the Z3
Tizen leads something of a quiet life. The open-source OS championed by Samsung has received extra attention of late, being the platform of choice for the company's sleek, new Gear S2 smartwatch. Tizen was originally expected to be a much bigger deal, though, reducing Samsung's reliance on Android for all of its many, many smartphones. But after several years of development, only one Tizen-powered smartphone has actually made it to market: the low-end Samsung Z1, which launched earlier this year in India. More were promised, and it seems Samsung isn't quite ready to send its Tizen mobile ambitions gently into that good night, today announcing the mid-range Z3.
Samsung Gear S preview: What's it like to type emails on a 2-inch screen?
Six. That's how many smartwatches Samsung has unveiled in the past 12 months. If these devices were Friends episodes, there'd be the original Galaxy Gear ("The one announced last year at this time"), the Gear 2 ("The one with fewer bugs"), the Gear Fit ("The one designed for fitness tracking"), the Gear 2 Neo ("The one that didn't cost as much") and the Gear Live ("The one that ran Android apps"). If nothing else, it shows that Samsung is willing to experiment -- and maybe even listen to feedback from users, and reviewers like us. Now, as the original Gear turns one, Samsung is showing off its sixth watch, the Gear S: the one that can run without a smartphone. Thanks to its very own nano-SIM card, the Gear S can make calls, as well as show you emails in full, with the option to reply directly from the device using a tiny on-screen keyboard. To Samsung's credit, it's unlike any other device it's made before. But the age-old question still remains: Was anybody asking for this?
Samsung's first Tizen phone slips further into the future (update)
Samsung's Tizen mobile OS already powers a pair of smartwatches, but what about those smartphones we've been promised for so long? Well the company's first consumer-ready Tizen phone -- the Samsung Z -- was supposed to make its official debut at a developer event in Moscow yesterday. Of course, the key words there are "supposed to". To hear the folks at the Wall Street Journal tell the tale, there was a Tizen event for enthusiasts, but Samsung quietly pulled the plug on the Z's launch days earlier.
Meet Samsung's new smartwatch family: the Gear 2, Neo and Fit
Samsung's new Gear smartwatches are no longer card-carrying members of its Android Galaxy. That's because Tizen, the company's open-sourced OS, has taken over the reins for the line begot by the barely five-month-old Galaxy Gear. And, in typical Samsung fashion, the company hasn't released just one new Gear, but three with very specific areas of focus: the fashionable Gear 2, the functional Gear Neo and fitness-focused Gear Fit. The newly announced trio was on display here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, giving us a chance to get acquainted with their particular quirks and let you know whether or not to free up some space on your wrist.
Samsung Gear 2 smartwatches coming in April with Tizen OS and better battery life
Even in an industry known for evolving at an impossibly quick pace, it's rare for a product to be replaced in just five months. If you've read our review of Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch, however, it probably makes sense why the manufacturer would want to antiquate it as soon as possible -- while an interesting concept, the wearable was clearly half-baked. This morning, Samsung is starting off Mobile World Congress by announcing the Gear 2 (shown above, right) and the camera-less Gear 2 Neo (above, left), both of which (the company hopes) will address most of its predecessor's pain points when it arrives in stores worldwide this April. The absence of Galaxy branding is no typo, by the way; the new Gear will run on the Tizen operating system, a platform which Samsung has been investing large amounts of money and resources into. It's not the company's first device running that OS -- that honor goes to the NX300M camera -- but regardless, it's hard to know exactly how different the user experience will be on a Tizen-powered smartwatch instead of an Android-based one. According to Samsung, we can expect a battery life of 2-3 days (two to three times better than the first Gear's one-day life), an "enriched application ecosystem" and some sweeping changes to the external design. Check out the gallery below and join us after the break for more details.
Bada to be retired, will see its best features absorbed by Tizen
It's been over a year since rumors and statements suggested Samsung's Bada OS was due to be terminated, but that some form of it would live on within the open-source Tizen OS. Now, Samsung exec Won-Pyo Hong has confirmed as such with Korean news agency Yonhap. Rather than a complete fusion of the two, Tizen will select only the best qualities of the featurephone-friendly Bada for assimilation. Samsung's Tizen 2.0-based handsets arriving in 2013 will put the final nail in Bada's coffin, but out of respect for its fallen comrade, Tizen will obligingly run apps designed for the retired OS. Like some kind of mobile software Highlander, Tizen is now drawing power from several perished peers, and has even set its sights on the mighty Android. There can be only one.
Tizen OS will run Android apps -- with a little help from third-party software (video)
As Tizen's open-source OS continues to make its first steps into the world, there's some good news for anyone concerned with a weak app line-up. It looks like both Android versions and Samsung's own Bada SDK will be supported through an application compatibility layer (ACL) which works along similar lines to the Android app player on BlackBerry's Playbook. Open Mobile, which is responsible for the ACL, claim it'll have 100 percent compatibility with Google's back catalogue and be just as responsive -- some pretty heady statements. The company wants its program be included on the OEM side of the equation -- this isn't aimed at humble end-user tinkerers. For now, you can check how its ACL fares in a quick video walkthrough after the break. (It's worth noting that the demo tablet isn't running on the Tizen UI -- it looks like we'll have to loiter around for some more hardware.)
Tizen developer phone appears, complete with 4.3-inch screen and dual-core CPU (video)
Not satisfied by the currently available mobile OS options? Tizen could be your next option, and Samsung just took the wraps off of a prototype device (possibly the GT-I9500 we'd heard about) at the currently ongoing developer's conference in San Francisco. As seen above in still photos taken by Tizen Talk, the developer unit running Tizen 1.0 features a 4.3-inch screen and reportedly contains a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU. There are more details revealed in a seven minute video posted by The Handheld Blog (embedded after the break), showing off a very TouchWiz-inspired experience which while plain and without many of the animations and transitions of polished release-quality software, did appear to run smoothly. The HTML5 apps themselves however, tended to lag a bit, although even at this early stage it showed off quite a bit of built-in support for social services like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. We should find out more about the coalition's plans over the next few days, for now check out the hands-on video and see if this Linux-based software has any more promise than webOS or the same MeeGo platform it dislodged.
Tizen 1.0 Larkspur arrives, fuels your open-source phone dreams
The unveiling of Tizen left many mobile open-source aficionados wondering when the OS would reach its all-important 1.0 status. The answer is now: the coalition between Intel, Panasonic, Samsung and a raft of carriers has posted the first non-beta release in both source code and software development kit forms. The finished versions of either carry new features to reward developers for the wait: SDK users get a new browser-based simulator and a faster emulator, while those scouring the source code will find new point-of-interest and route searching features in location-aware apps as well as WiFi Direct and more HTML5 support. About the only wait left is for an actual Tizen phone to ship. [Image credit: Realnorth]
