Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Enters Smartphone Wars With Bada OS
MojoKid writes "Samsung is betting there's room for more in the smartphone market and has unveiled its new bada OS. The name 'bada,' means 'ocean' in Korean and was chosen to convey the 'limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform.' Samsung claims the OS is extremely simple for developers, saying that bada was built to be extremely interactive with its users — including flash control, motion sensing, fine-tuned vibration control and face detection. Samsung is hoping developers will take this user interface and create a variety of applications focused around it, and thus provide different types of apps than exist for the iPhone and Android OS. The bada OS has a variety of sensors, including accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity and activity. Samsung will be hosting a series of Developer Days in Seoul, London and San Francisco, among other cities, throughout 2010."
BadOS? Was Windows Mobile rebranded?
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
To go with their new, incompatible OS, maybe they can introduce yet another new, incompatible power plug and a new, incompatible headphone jack!
We figured out in the 1990s that writing your own OS every couple of years doesn't scale. You just end up isolating your developers from the rest of the industry.
I've written a few worthless OSes myself. One of them actually gets used still. But I wrote it out of desperation, not as a business model.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
very likely to come with Bada Bing.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Wouldn't it be better to have a limitless variety of actual applications?
...as it doesn't specify a single kernel. [source] It's more of a unified platform for development on Samsung phones.
It also probably uses EFL, as Samsung was recently shown to sponsor the development of Enlightenment and its supporting libraries [source]
With Nokia moving to a unified development environment across most of their devices, it's really not a surprising move for the #2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
Now, please explain how an OS can possess sensors?
Based on goatseOS, lets you get your dots on all your slashes. Coming to the trollphone and dogballs netbook in 2016.
I think some people are misunderstanding diversity. For a consumer device like a mobile phone, having multiple versions in the market is held to stimulate demand. It makes sense for manufacturers to optimise their kernels and support for the devices they want to use, then offer a consistent developer interface. It also makes sense for developers - large manufacturers like Samsung want to have a "community" of developers, not people who produce a product that works with the competition as well. It is then worth investing support effort in those developers, because they are not giving it away to the competition.
As I say, we'll see in a year how this pans out. Meanwhile, 4 multitasking relatively open platforms versus a pretty and slick but less capable one. 2010 looks interesting.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Indeed - Samsung are the 2nd largest phone company in terms of market share (second only to Nokia), and they have plenty of "smart"phones (especially if you use a definition broad enough to include the Iphone - that would include most phones).
Of course, perhaps to Slashdot and the media they've "entered", because they seem to have some distorted idea that the mobile phone market consists of Apple in the lead, with the only competition being from Blackberry and Android. The reality is nothing of the sort. (E.g., this random page I found gives Nokia at 35%, Samsung 2nd at 31%, basically a whole load of companies who virtually never get Slashdot coverage - and Apple, who get Daily Iphone Slashvertisements, at 4% - and that's one of the higher estimates I've seen for Apple.)
Presumably what the article meant to say is that they've entered the smartphone OS wars, in that I believe that previously they'd used off the shelf OSs like Windows Mobile and Android? Comparing to the Iphone or the Droid doesn't make sense, since this is a new OS, it should be compared to OSs such as Symbian and Android (and if they were going to compare to products rather than OS, please, at least pick some of the major sellers rather than ones with small market share).
In A.D. 2009
Smartphone war was beginning.
Steve Jobs: What happen?
Steve's assistant: Somebody set up us the Samsung Bada.
Apple technician: We get UMTS signal.
Steve Jobs: What?
(...)
From the website navigation menu: bada for business | bada for developers.
Bada for Samsung, more like.
Amnesty International
I wish I'd known about this a few months ago.
I bought an Android-based Samsung Galaxy which is great hardware-wise (standard connectors, 8GB flash built-in and still the best-looking Android phone out there, in my opinion), but looks to be basically abandoned software-wise.
Just this week Samsung pushed another small update for the same Android 1.5 which came with the system at a time when Android 2.1 devices are already available from other vendors. There have been rumours that Samsung has no intentions of upgrading the system software to even 1.6, and they're not communicating anything to the community.
This sucks since more and more apps are coming out requiring at least 1.6, such as the google maps navigation and google goggles.
Hell, at least they could allow changes to the baseband so that the community could build their own system. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of having an open-source OS when you can't use the radio because it's locked down.
In fact, unlike other Android phones, you need Samsung's crappy, bloated, windows-only software just to upgrade the system's firmware. The other get automatic over-the-air updates.
My advice to anyone considering an Android phone is to go with HTC (they're still supporting the G1) or Motorola (they have their future riding on Android). Samsung isn't getting my money again.