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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.
Nexus One lives on as Google's official developer phone
Well, it looks like the now slightly dated Google Ion finally has an official successor -- Google has just announced that the Nexus One is its new developer phone. It apparently remains unchanged from the recently-axed consumer model, however, and Google notes that it will ship with Android 2.1 but receive Android 2.2 shortly after you turn it on. Got your developer credentials handy? Then you can log in and get your order in right now for $529. Update: We just got a look at the specs on Google's developer site and it looks like the Nexus One on offer is unfortunately T-Mobile only. Check out the tell-tale bands for yourself after the break. Update 2: The specs mention that the device has "no root access" and that the bootloader is locked, but we're taking this to mean it's no different from any other Nexus One you'd buy. More ominously, though, it says that fastboot isn't enabled, which leads us to wonder whether this is going to cause problems with bootloader unlocks in the field. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Thanks, Carson!
