HandsetsNews

Rumor: Samsung to introduce Tizen-powered Galaxy smartphone

18

When it comes to Android, Samsung has been one of the platform’s biggest supporters (and more often than not, Google’s surrogate in courtroom battles targeting devices running the OS), but the smartphone and tablet maker has never fully written off the idea of dabbling in other mobile operating systems. Most recently Samsung has launched a series of Windows Phone devices and in the past event attempted to launch their own mobile OS dubbed Bada.

Through all their endeavors their Galaxy brand has remained synonymous with Android, thanks in no small part to the success of the Galaxy S line of smartphones. This might change soon. A report from Digitimes claims that Samsung will soon launch a Galaxy device running an alternate OS to Android, the Linux-based Tizen.

You may recall that Tizen is the very platform that Samsung rolled their Bada OS into. It is a platform backed by the likes of Intel. If and when a smartphone running the OS comes to market, it will have an uphill climb to the top in light of Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, but the Galaxy name could provide a big boost. And perhaps this is why Samsung is considering the option. If any company has a chance to build up a userbase from scratch, Samsung has the influence. Even Verizon’s CEO agrees.

So what would a non-Android Galaxy phone spell for the rest of the line? Could we someday see a flagship Galaxy S device running a different operating system then Android? It is hard to imagine, but definitely not out of the question. Samsung’s loyalty is to producing great hardware that interfaces with a great OS to provide a great user experience. Samsung might one day decide that this means moving on from Android. But it’s all rumor for now. While there is little doubt Samsung will someday launch a Tizen-based phone, whether or not it earns a Galaxy logo is something we’ll leave to rumor for now.

[Digitimes via BGR]

Kevin Krause
Pretty soon you'll know a lot about Kevin because his biography will actually be filled in!

Survey Says: Developer interest in Android on the decline

Previous article

Soak test for Motorola Atrix 2 set to commence, what to expect is a mystery

Next article

You may also like

18 Comments

  1. will not even come close to be able to compete.

    1. Android is a open source platform with a powerful ecosystem.

    2. So is IOS.

    3. It better come out with everything android and ios offer and then some if it wants to succeed

    1. iOS and open source in the same sentence? O.o

    2. 1. Android is based on an open source platform. It is not fully open source.
      2. iOS has absolutely nothing related to Open Source.
      3. It can pretty easily come with Windows 8(Metro apps) and WebOS applications because it uses the same technologies.

  2. it probably won’t earn the Galaxy moniker and it is likely that flagships will be built to run Tizen. Just look at the Activ S, which is a Galaxy S3 running Windows Phone 8.

  3. Release fastboot images of it for the Galaxy Nexus. See what the Nexus community thinks of it.

    Couldn’t hurt…

  4. Slow to update OS and decent display alternatives rule this out. They aren’t as great as they think they are.

    1. Bada line of phones was prettier than Galaxy line. And yet Galaxy win because of Android, Google Services and Play Market. It was nothing to do with Galaxy brand or any other thing. Samsung is not Apple they do not have army of iSheeps that will buy Galaxy phone just because…

      People buying iPhones or Android Phones. Once consumer understand that he need the Android phone he is thinking will it be Samsung, Moto or HTC…

  5. >.> Tizen will fail, the only thing appealing about it are the animations but put that aside and you are loosing half the features and performance not to mention Google play and all the Google services. Samsung has profited a lot from Android even with the 1 billion loss to apple they still made a 5 bill profit last quarter, why fix something that isn’t broken.

  6. So, Samsung are planning on a phone with a cheap OS and half the features of Android – how long until Apple sue over that?

  7. Not a good idea to use the Galaxy name for another OS, since people might get confused (most aren’t as nerdy) and they might get angry when they find out it’s not Android. I know I’d take the device back within the hour

  8. Careful Samsung, you don’t want your customer base to start hating you…..

    1. Hating for giving another alternative, a truly open source platform?

  9. I don’t understand. If there is no licensing fees for Android, and so far Android has worked out really well for Samsung, why would they want anything else?

    1. Just testing the waters, nothing wrong with that. Every tool with a patent is trying to get a piece of the Android pie (at Samsung’s expense) and Windows Phone hasn’t gained any traction yet. I would be looking at other options too if I were Samsung.

      The growth is in the emerging markets that don’t have a lot of smart phone users. Tizen would be perfect to incubate in those areas and hopefully be competitive against the big boys some day. Is it likely to work? Probably not, but Samsung can afford to experiment.

    2. A bigger performance(getting rid of the big Java overhead).
      In Tizen the UI is running in a separate Thread like on Windows Mobile 7+ and iOS which means that there are no lags or freezes in the UI(like scrolling a web page and seeing lags on a weaker hardware).
      Own applications market. Full access to code(Truly open source platform).
      Attractive development environment for Web Developers(which are a lot).
      If it is successful than all the companies interested in the OS can improve it compared to how Android development is handled.
      There are a lot of other things…

  10. I see BGR listed as a source…they DO know that Samsung and Galaxy are not exactly the same thing right?

    Seriously, more power to Sammy…I don’t think Tizen will come close to Android, at least not in the near future, but I think Samsung has the right to branch out.

  11. Lol the majority of you fanboys sound a bit butt hurt

  12. This will be THE fail Bada failed this one will fail also.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in Handsets