PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Samsung has unveiled its first ever smartphone running the Tizen operating system.
The Samsung Z will be shown off at the Tizen Developer Conference being held in San Francisco this week.
It will feature a 720p HD AMOLED display, 2.3GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of memory, 8MP camera, heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner and LTE.
While most Samsung smartphones use Android OS, the South Korean firm has been working with Intel to develop Tizen for its devices.
PCR first heard about Samsung’s plans for moving away from Google’s Android system earlier this year, when senior vice president Yoon Han-kil revealed that there would be at least two smartphones running the Linux-based mobile operating system before August 2014.
“Although Android still needs to be our main business, Tizen will be used for markets that Android could not address,” he said.
Although this is the world’s first Tizen smartphone, it isn’t the first Tizen device from Samsung.
The company’s latest smartwatch, the Gear 2, is powered by the open source platform.
The wearable tech was unveiled at this year’s Mobile World Congress and features a dual-core 1GHz chipset, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage.
The Samsung Z will go on sale in Russia later this year. No price or further release details have been announced yet.
