Skip to main content

What Is This Tizen OS Everybody Is Talking About?

By VJ
As far as mobile and tablet operating systems go, we have a lot in our hands. There are our big guys, Android and iOS; Windows Phone has come recently and taken a small chunk off the market; and there are upcoming Ubuntu and Firefox OS. You have probably been hearing a lot about Tizen these days, haven’t you?

Tizen is a new mobile operating system that is coming to our world, founded by the Linux Foundation and promoted by the Tizen Association, which has among its members such biggies in the tech world as Intel, Samsung, Sprint, NTT Docomo, Vodafone, Panasonic, Huawei, Fujitsu, etc.

In this article, we will take a detailed analysis of Tizen OS.

What Is Tizen?


You are familiar with Android OS, Apple’s iOS, Windows Phone, etc., right? Tizen is an upcoming operating system that will power tablets and smartphones. But it doesn’t stop just there. It is expected to power much more than that, such as small netbooks (ultrabooks); IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment) systems such as vehicle navigation, car computers, etc.; and smart TVs.

We haven’t got a lot of information about the operating system yet, but some developers do. In June, Tizen developer hardware became available to a select group of developers. We managed to get this video of the Tizen smartphone by Samsung, thanks to the Handheld Blog:



The device in the video is quite basic, and has a not-so-appealing interface. But you should know it’s a developer device, and it doesn’t represent the final user interface. By September last year, Tizen 2.0 software development kit (SDK) was made available to the developers.

As an operating system, Tizen will provide support for all features that you want based on their availability on hardware—LTE, NFC, etc.

The most important aspect of the OS is that it is a completely open source, open web operating system. This means, it will have support for apps developed for the HTML 5 ecosystem besides native apps.

Tizen Can Run Android Apps


We were looking through this PDF describing the Application Compatibility Layer (ACL) for Tizen from OpenMobile, an organization that provides application compatibility for various platforms. With ACL incorporation, Tizen will be able to run any Android app you get on Google Play. That PDF mentions about 400,000 apps. We found out the PDF was released in Sep, 2011. At that time, Android market had that many apps, while now it has above 600,000 apps, most of which should run on Tizen.

Not only that, the ACL promises the apps will be a hundred per cent compatible and will run as nimbly as they do on a regular Android phone. This is an amazing promise indeed, and it will take away the app ecosystem barrier we find today among smartphone and tablet operating systems.

Webkit & HTML 5 Support


Tizen has support for web browser platform, Webkit. It gives pretty good support for HTML 5. If you read our previous articles about HTML 5, you may probably know it is going to be the next web standard, and also pretty much important for upcoming smartphone apps; Firefox OS and Ubuntu will have full support for HTML 5.

Also, HTML 5 apps are not ‘mobile’ apps, but full-fledged web apps; this means HTML 5 has the capability to become the de-facto standard in mobile app development. In this scenario, Tizen’s amazing support for HTML 5 is a highly welcome thing.

When Is It Expected?


In January, Samsung confirmed that it will release Tizen-based devices to the market sometime this year. It was reported in BloombergBusinessweek. Here’s the statement:
We plan to release new, competitive Tizen devices within this year and will keep expanding the lineup depending on market conditions.
That is the most current information we could get about Tizen. However, due to the release of BlackBerry 10, announcement of Firefox OS, and Ubuntu, we have reason to believe the competition to get fierce this year in the mobile OS market.


[Update: ]

Tizen version 2.0 has been officially announced in the Mobile World Congress Barcelona. The developer devices were manufactured by Samsung and Huawei. The mobile carrier that signed up to release the smartphones with Tizen is France Telecom-Orange. You can find more details at TechCrunch. Here is a pic that TC obtained of the device.

Tizen OS device in MWC

Conclusion


Tizen is backed by some of the biggest companies in the industry. Hardware and chip makers and some of the biggest mobile carriers back Tizen development. This is important. Tizen is the one mobile platform that gets such huge support and backing from big players.

Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2011 has been known to be one of the reasons behind Samsung’s enthusiasm to go out of Android.

If Google has its own hardware manufacturing division, why would it license Android to other OEMs as freely as it does now? Also, manufacturers like Samsung are keen to get unchained from this dependence on the search giant. These are probably the reasons behind the development of Tizen as a full-fledged mobile platform. We will have to wait for the OS to come to the market before we can say anything further.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The History of Microsoft - Page 1

By VJ
Page 1 -   Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 My readers have been asking me around about the company known far and wide as Microsoft and how it came to be the top-most in computer technology. I thought it apt to make a post here detailing the story of Microsoft through its developmental stages. Two tech geeks, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, both dropouts from their respective universities, have managed to create this giant in computer software. Here it is, the history of Microsoft as a software company. I found a lot of information published by Wikipedia and other such sites to be wrong. I have managed to get the dates and events as accurately as possible here. The story of Microsoft begins when Popular Electronics published an article about the first personal computer. The First Year—1975 January 1 st 1975: The advertisement of the first ever personal computer—MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) Altair 8800 appears on the Popular Electronics magazine. This is a d...
Read the full article »

What Is the Role of a Firewall, and How Does It Secure a Network From Unsafe Traffic?

By VJ
To understand firewalls, basic understanding of how networks function is requisite. Deep down, how do the packets of information that you send reach the intended receivers? How do the messages intended for you reach you safely? And how does it all function like clockwork? Let’s understand the basics of firewalls and see how a firewall secures the traffic in and out of a network. Consider this scenario for getting an understanding of how firewalls work. Say, you open up your browser to book a flight ticket for your upcoming vacation, and your computer is conveniently insecure without a firewall. Let’s say you come across an intriguing email that gives an offer you can’t refuse. You open the email and click a link, and bam! An unwanted piece of spyware is installed on your system. The spyware then proceeds to sit on your system tray, hidden from your eyes, tracking the keystrokes you make, reading the top-secret files you have, and looking for potentially rewarding information, such...
Read the full article »

Acer Aspire R7: Is It a Great Tablet PC to Buy In the Current Market?

By VJ
In the last few hours, I was engrossed in all kinds of thoughts and skepticisms about the latest tablet PC from Acer, Aspire R7. The tablet computer runs Windows 8 and comes with what most people call a ‘weird design’. However, is that really the case? How good or bad this new product really is? Let’s find out through this article. The First Impressions on the Design I looked through almost all of the first look reviews I could lay my hands on. Most of them talk about one most important aspect of this tablet PC—its design. Acer Aspire R7 as you can see here in this image is a weirdly designed tablet PC. It is neither a tablet, nor a laptop, nor a PC. Still, it works as all of them. R7 comes with an aluminum unibody design that has a hinge known as ‘Ezel hinge’. With the help of the hinge, this computer can take four different shapes, you know kind of like Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga. Aspire R7 has one of the best design innovations that we got to see in Windows 8 computers . The four...
Read the full article »