You think Research in Motion is the only company handing out prototype phones to developers in hopes of getting them to write apps for its new operating system? Think again.

Samsung has started providing developers with smartphones running the Tizen Linux-based operating system.

Samsung Tizen smartphone protoype

Tizen is the OS that rose out of the ashes of MeeGo (and Moblin and Maemo before it). The platform is backed by Intel, Samsung, the Linux Foundation, and a number of other big players. Tizen 1.0 was released last week in advance of the 2012 Tizen Developer conference.

It’s an open source platform designed for phones, netbooks, in-car entertainment systems, and other mobile devices.

There’s a heavy emphasis on web technologies, but to be honest, when you slap it on a smartphone, Tizen looks an awful lot like every iOS, Android, BlackBerry 10, and every other mobile operating system on the market these days.

The developer phone also looks pretty familiar. It has a 4.3 inch display, a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, a touchscreen display, and front and rear cameras — although there’s no camera app yet. The software platform is still pretty young.

You can check out a video overview of the phone in action thanks to the folks at The Handheld Blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1y7CpIaVA

via Netbook News and Engadget

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers