In the wake of Meego’s demise a new open source mobile operating system has emerged. Known as Tizen and backed by Samsung and Intel, the Linux-based OS recently hit the version 1.0 milestone and has even been paired with an official reference hardware platform. Unlike the alternative OSes that came before it, Tizen does not use the Qt application framework. Instead, Tizen apps are created using HTML5 and other web standards. It is intended to be used in smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, vehicle entertainment systems, and low-power notebooks.

Tizen is currently being developed by a partnership between Intel, Samsung, the Linux Foundation, and others. The latest partner is Sprint-Nextel, which has announced its intent to join the Tizen Association and to feature Tizen-powered smartphones in its future product lineups. Let’s dive straight into the features of Tizen, and then we’ll look at the applications.

Features

Tizen is still in development, but it is designed to support a number of high-end smartphone features. The OS supports HD screen resolutions, and up to three front-facing buttons that can be physical or capacitive. Further, it features support for tethering, NFC, WiFi, GPS, and 4G LTE technologies. It is designed to work around ARM or x86 processors and up to 1GB of RAM. It can also support cameras, touchscreens, and other sensors pending software support (there is no camera application yet but it is coming). While it is short on application and developer support right now, it is intended for high-end devices and to be at least as capable as Android.

Home screen

After powering up a Tizen device (in our case an emulator — there is no readily available hardware yet), users are presented with a home screen that ditches the Meego approach and appears very similar to that of Android and iOS. At the top is a status bar for notifications, time, battery life, and wireless radio signal strengths. The remaining screen space is devoted to the grid of applications installed on the device. On our system, it presented the icons in a rather spaced out grid of four icons per row, and a maximum of six rows per screen (multiple home screens will be allowed). Very basic, but practical.

Task switcher

The task switcher can be accessed by holding down the home button. It shows a list of running applications and a history of recent apps. The task switcher shows the CPU usage per application and allows you to kill individual apps, or every app all at once.

Next page: Applications