The Tizen project, which was launched in September by the Linux Foundation, Intel and Samsung, has now announced the opening of source code repositories and the release of an SDK for the Tizen mobile operating system. Both are described as "very early previews" and are aimed at giving developers the opportunity to take a look at and give feedback on the heir to MeeGo and Limo.

As anticipated, Tizen apps will primarily utilise web technologies such as HTML5. The SDK documentation elucidates some of the details and discusses programming interfaces such as the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC). It also includes information on some of the technologies behind Tizen. The Qt toolkit for UI programming used in Meego has been superseded by the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) which Samsung used for Bada.

Screenshots of the Tizen UI generated using the SDK can be found on web sites such as Sammobile. It looks in many respects a lot like Samsung's Bada, but with a few MeeGo elements thrown in for good measure. According to the Sammobile report, the browser is running on a Samsung I9500. Sammobile and other web sites speculate that Samsung may be planning to launch a Tizen smartphone at Mobile World Congress (MWC) at the end of February, though they also air the possibility that Samsung is merely testing the OS on a device which will then be sold with Android.

(ehe)