Could Tizen Be the Next Android?

MollsEisley writes: Right now, Tizen is still somewhat half-baked, which is why you shouldn't expect to see a high-end Tizen smartphone hit your local carrier for a while yet, but Samsung's priorities could change rapidly. If Tizen development speeds up a bit, the OS could become a stand-in for Android on entry-level and mid-range Samsung phones and eventually take over Samsung's entire smartphone (and tablet) lineup.

Comments

Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsungs extensions on Android are bad enough - if they had an entire OS they controlled? Stuff that!

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[gsslay]

It'll be the usual story with Samsung;

Hardware; neat!
Software; Oh my god, what did your customers do to you to inflict this on them?

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[GNious]

As an owner of a Samsung BluRay player, I can confirm the Software part of the above statement.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[topologicalanomaly47]

Hm,

I used to say exactly that. I owned a Galaxy S2 in the past and was convinced the above is true. But now after setting up my wife's nexus the S5 I bought for me is a pleasure. After all the crap google pulls just to force G+ down users throats (multiple sms anybody?, facebook pictures for contacts?, etc) the samsung extensions are a pleasure.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[CreatureComfort]

I had an original Galaxy S. It was so bad, I swore I would never buy another piece of Samsung electronics again.

Well, this time around, the only phone AT&T offered that met what I wanted was the Note 4, so I took a chance, with a heavy heart and much misgiving. I have to say, almost 4 months in, and I love this phone. Most of the stock apps are good enough that I'm using them rather than taking the chance on play store garbage. (Very unusual for me, I usually end up modding the hell out of my android phones) The Gear VR came in for Xmas,and is a great toy. I put in a 128Gb SD card and I have way more room than I need, even with a half dozen 3D full length movies on board. There is no lag or slow down on any of the games I have downloaded, and the screen is beautiful. WiFi and Bluetooth so far work flawlessly and fast. So far, all of the things that have frustrated me have turned out to be KitKat issues, not anything that Samsung has done.

It's large, but I never wish it was any smaller, only that my hands were a bit bigger. It's still small enough to be pocketable, even inside an otterbox, and I never hold it up to my ear when I'm actually on a call (less than 5% of the time I'm using it anyway). With bluetooth in the car, as a headset, and speakerphone on my desk, I rarely have to take it out of my pocket or the car/desk holder to talk.

It is good enough, that it just may entice me into getting Samsung when I get my 70" UHD TV later this year.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[PopeRatzo]

LOL Google don't force you to use G+.

Try to delete it. It's your phone, go ahead.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[gbjbaanb]

You have to consider that the Samsung extras are the only thing they can really do to make their phones different, and so they have to create something almost by default. The problem is coming up with an idea for a thing that hasn't already been done by Google. (its like Microsoft in reverse, once a 3rd party came up with a great idea and Microsoft them bundled their own version in the next OS, Google bundles them before you have a chance!)

So maybe if they are dedicated to an OS, they will have more of a reason to write good addons and software features to go with it, as Google isn't exactly going to port the whole of Google Play to Tizen for them, and if they don't produce good feature software, no-one will buy the phones.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[Archangel Michael]

If you don't want G+, then don't sign up with Google at all. You don't need Google on Android at all. Nope, not required. The thing of it is, you want all the things Google does so well (which includes G+ IMHO), but don't want things you might not like. If you're that hung up on not using G+ (don't worry, Google already knows all about you) then don't use it.

Or you know, just buy an iPhone already. Or Blackberry (LOL, yeah I know it is android) or even a Windows Phone (ROFL).

Or grow some tech knowledge, root your phone, install a custom ROM and don't install the Google Apps package. I don't know if I am on /. or some whiny tinfoil hat blog.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[thegarbz]

Updates will re-enable apps. This is a quick in how they are installed in the partition that is effectively read only unless you apply an update. This is also why you can't uninstall them.

Providing another service outside Google Play access to these apps is seen as a "security risk" as the resulting service would require root access.

Re:Well if that happens, it'll be bye bye Samsung.

[PopeRatzo]

It took a few less than intuitive steps, but I was able to disable Google Plus today. I've already had to disable Google Now because Lollipop killed my Nexus 7. It gets a little closer to working condition with every google service I remove.

Also, it turned out that "Tegra Zone" (whatever that is) was also a big resource hog. I know most of you probably knew that, but I never had to think about my Nexus 7's performance until Lollipop came along and destroyed everything I liked about Android.

A guess

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it can not. Android is already entrenched, and in a market where not even microsoft can dislodge it despite reasonable efforts Samsung can definitely forget about doing so.

Re:A guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, Microsoft couldn't even dislodge Symbian.

Re:A guess

[TheRaven64]

Symbian, particularly EKA2, was a very well designed system. It was let down by its slow adaptation to changing requirements. The userspace APIs were designed for a world where 4MB of RAM meant a high-end device. You suffered some difficulty programming because it was the only way to make sure things fitted in this little space. When 128MB started to mean a low-end device, this was a problem - the cost wasn't worth paying to be using 10% of the device's RAM instead of 15%. It wasn't helped by the in-fighting at Nokia that resulted in a load of different potential replacements.

Re:A guess

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Sounds somewhat like poor old classic PalmOS. Agile as hell on virtually no hardware at all; but increasingly lost and confused as capabilities expanded, and absolutely no logical room for growth, except perhaps as an emulator on something totally different.

"Half Baked"?

[Freshly Exhumed]

Let's be clear that Tizen is actually the child of Nokia's and Intel's Linux-based OS that was known as Meego, which owed much of its existence to Nokia's Maemo Linux platform and Intel's Moblin. That's a lot of history, and Samsung has added more and more. Half-baked? What a bizarre term.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[Rhaban]

Let's be clear that Tizen is actually the child of Nokia's and Intel's Linux-based OS that was known as Meego, which owed much of its existence to Nokia's Maemo Linux platform and Intel's Moblin. That's a lot of history, and Samsung has added more and more. Half-baked? What a bizarre term.

overbaked?

Re:"Half Baked"?

[nonsequitor]

Let's be clear that Tizen is actually the child of Nokia's and Intel's Linux-based OS that was known as Meego, which owed much of its existence to Nokia's Maemo Linux platform and Intel's Moblin. That's a lot of history, and Samsung has added more and more. Half-baked? What a bizarre term.

I think it refers to the fact they must have been high to think it's a good idea.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[jareth-0205]

Let's be clear that Tizen is actually the child of Nokia's and Intel's Linux-based OS that was known as Meego, which owed much of its existence to Nokia's Maemo Linux platform and Intel's Moblin. That's a lot of history, and Samsung has added more and more. Half-baked? What a bizarre term.

"Been fiddled with for ages" doesn't really mean it's mature or ready. The fact is hasn't been on any significant number of devices in the real world would be a big flag, there's alot of refinement that comes from *actual* use in the wild that you don't get from lab development.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[hitmark]

I was recently corrected on the connection between Meego and Tizen. Apparently Meego was abandoned fully upon the foundation of Tizen, and the only connection between the two was that Intel was involved with both (tough they seem to have since pulled out of Tizen).

In essence the only remnant of Maemo/Meego is Sailfish, the continuation of Mer.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use Meego on my Nokia N9, best phone I've ever had, and still have (I also have a M8 One and iPhone 5S - I'm a mobile dev, I absolutely prefer Meego over iOS and Android).

Meego is amazing, there's no denying it - I haven't taken a hands-on look at Tizen lately, but I can't imagine they've stuffed it up too much, and if they've managed to improve on Meego, well I'll be there in a heart beat, decent hardware permitting.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[caspy7]

In essence the only remnant of Maemo/Meego is Sailfish, the continuation of Mer.

I feel like I need a Tolkienesque chart to keep up with this.

Re:"Half Baked"?

[jareth-0205]

I can't imagine they've stuffed it up too much, and if they've managed to improve on Meego

Have you used a Samsung-inflicted Android phone..? They have a knack for making things worse...

Nope

[Val314]

most likely the next Meego

(Or if its more lucky the next Firefox OS or Ubuntu Phone)

No Apps => Noone buys it

Re:Nope

[Flavianoep]

Like they assume that if there isn't a Facebook app they can't use Facebook.

AFAIK, without a Facebook app one will not receive Facebook notifications every time it's algorithms say it should, and this matters for many people.

Re:Nope

[Stormwatch]

MeeGo actually had a chance... if only the M$ trojan hadn't entered Nokia!

Re:Nope

[short]

No Apps => Noone buys it

Tizen runs Android apps by ACL; as I heard.

Re:Nope

[Required Snark]

What other phone manufacturer would touch Tizen with a 10-foot pole? That would put them at a significant disadvantage because Samsung would never let them build a better product. So the only ones using will be Samsung, and somehow it doesn't seem likely that Samsung can create the same kind of walled garden that Apple has developed.

It seems like Google is has no long term commitment to building phone hardware. They didn't keep Motorola, for example. And this attempt to make a modular phone seems more like a technology demonstration then a product role out. Does anyone think they will try and make a business line out of it? I doubt it. So hardware vendors can continue use Android and not be worried about competing with Google directly, which is why I think they got rid of Motorola.

Re:Nope

[DarkOx]

Yea, people at facebook.

Re:Nope

[Andy Dodd]

Most of those emulation layers have failed... While it's 95%+ compatible, that last 5% causes many people's apps to not work. Blackberry tried Android runtime compatibility and failed miserably.

Re:Nope

[Rich0]

What other phone manufacturer would touch Tizen with a 10-foot pole? That would put them at a significant disadvantage because Samsung would never let them build a better product. So the only ones using will be Samsung, and somehow it doesn't seem likely that Samsung can create the same kind of walled garden that Apple has developed.

It seems like Google is has no long term commitment to building phone hardware. They didn't keep Motorola, for example. And this attempt to make a modular phone seems more like a technology demonstration then a product role out. Does anyone think they will try and make a business line out of it? I doubt it. So hardware vendors can continue use Android and not be worried about competing with Google directly, which is why I think they got rid of Motorola.

I think this is a big part of what is making Android so successful. It used to be part of what made MS successful, but in recent years MS has been trying to become more like Apple, and thus everybody is running (if I only had $100 everytime Adobe sells a copy of photoshop, maybe we should be the exclusive hardware provider for some new OS, etc).

People like to decry the generic model but it is a BIG reason for why PCs took off. It works best when you don't have too much vertical ownership of the whole chain, so that everybody feels like the market they're competing in is a fair one.

It will be their biggest mistake

[aibot.slashdot]

It will be just an other obscure mobile OS - But If Samsung actually start to manufacture Tizen devices over Android. They will loose the market just like NOKIA did a few years before.

Wat need does it fulfill better

[obarthelemy]

(apart from Samsung's need for pressure points vs Google ?)

Tizen needs a unique selling point. Being "a Mobile OS that works" isn't one, that need has been met years ago, and nobody wants Yet Another Smartphone OS for the sake of it.Maybe there's a need at the extreme low-end, next to Microsoft's Asha line (not a resounding success), and a tad below Android One. Maybe Security could be a selling point (except it doesn't seem to be doing much for Blackberry). Maybe there's a fringe of teach-heads who deem Tizen more linux-y than Android and keep agitating about it for that reason (not a big market).
As it stands, the most unfulfilled need I see is the carriers' desire to take back control of our phones, and I'd rather that one stay unfulfilled.

Re:Wat need does it fulfill better

[MichaelSmith]

It would be like TinyBASIC or MicroVMS. A temporary solution to take advantage of cheap hardware but a year down the track, good hardware would be cheap enough to run the real thing.

Re:whoa, more hipster shit to avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hipster shit is just too mainstream for you?

Porting

[gmuslera]

If they want to have a chance, they must not have just bundled with a few new phones. It should have good enough ports for other samsung devices (even done officially by samsung) and open enough devices from other major manufacturers. They need to build a critical mass of actual users and a community behind it. And need to be very open. If they want (or must do, if done by another company) may keep some key part (i.e. optional android compatibility app/libraries) as what they sell or license of it and is not fully open source, but the rest should be.

Meego/Maemo failed mostly because it was available mostly on one particular device from one particular manufacturer. They could learn the lesson this time.

Well...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's hard to be optimistic about the fate of a competitor starting from behind(and with Samsung, not exactly a bastion of taste, UI/UX expertise, or other software virtues, as the most visible player) and up against Android(which arguably has some seriously fucked design problems, but is actively being worked on and has Google's vast cloud-dominion behind it), iOS(which has zero users who aren't Apple; but usually manages to show the virtues of having a competent dictator), and WP(currently pretty tepid marketshare; but is a testament to the fact that MS can actually bring some talent to bear on a problem if somebody beats the hubris out of them enough times in a row).

That said, despite my low hopes, it sure would be nice to see it do better. Despite years of development, Android still bears some serious scars of either things that seemed like a good idea at the time(presumably back when supporting extremely resource constrained devices was still a consideration, in the period not long after it was developed as a successor to the OS used in 'sidekick' devices) or which simply didn't pan out(the not-actually-a-JVM-really-we-swear turned out not to be fast enough, so they added native extensions, and ARM turned out to more or less steamroller the competition in the smartphone space at about the same time, so nobody actually cared whether cross-platform worked or not, except Intel, who simply wrote up another shim to handle ARM native components). They say...nice...things about how well the audio system performs, as well.

It ships on a wide variety of devices that you can actually buy, today; but Android is pretty hard to get enthusiastic about as a pile of stuff dumped on top of Linux. A slightly less dysfunctional pile of stuff wouldn't be revolutionary; but it would be nice.

Re:Well...

[mSparks43]

I'm going to talk a little bit of personal experience and opinion.

What matters in tech is the "ultra high end".
That is - what is "simply" the BEST device you can get.
Right now it's the Samsung S5
few years before that it was the HTC one
few years before that it was the iPhone.

Then there is everybody else who follows.
Android was a success because the "best" devices (tablet and phone) ran it. we then set the stage for the rest of the market to follow.
Similar story with games consoles and next gen video.
PS3 was the best device -> Blueray became the market standard.
And openGL vs DirectX

personally, while I see it as there is just "no other choice" than android. I, and the rest of the "best in class screw the price" buyers don't like android enough to choose an android device over a better one that does what I need. Not by a long stretch.

Gives us a simple formular
You can't set the market standard using substandard devices.

bring me a 16 core, 4Ghz phone, with a ton of ram and 3 days battery life and whatever OS you put on it will be the new standard.
As long as Android is the OS on the leading edge devices it will remain the standard, as soon as it isn't it will loose share fast.

Nope

[DrXym]

What does Tizen do that Android doesn't? Or Windows Phone for that matter? It's just another software stack running over a kernel. Performance and battery life is likely to be little different.

The only reason it exists at all is because Samsung sees Google taking 30% off of app sales and services and it wants that 30% for itself. That might be a wonderful motivating factor for Samsung to push this thing. For everyone else... not so much. Consumers will just see a new platform which has doesn't have the apps they want to use. App developers will just see yet another lame duck platform that they must spend inordinate effort to support or ignore completely.

Unless Samsung money hats devs and hand out free phones like candy, they're not going to get the buy-in to their platform. And even if they do it's no guarantee - Nokia and Blackberry both went down that route trying to buy devs and it didn't pay off.

we will know if it makes the big time

[Chrisq]

we will know if it makes the big time when Microsoft decides its worth suing for "unspecified patent infringements"

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Buchenskjoll]

Yeah, I remember the search engine for it: Bada Bing!

Won't happen. Android is matured and leads in apps

[Qbertino]

Android has matured and leads in apps. And it's freely available for a wide range of devices already. I don't see anybody coming close to the package Google can offer, tie-in services included. Apple sells hardware - their services are a loss. MS sells business software, subscriptions to MS Office, Consoles and now tablets. AFAICT they are behind in comodity computing now.

Google makes money selling *you*. They can give away all their stuff for free, including their services. As soon as one vendor has to pay extra to adapt Tizen, there will be a strong incentive to look into Android again. Or Chrome OS as the case may be. All Google needs to do is perhaps offer a few cheap-and-easy co-branding options for their OS.

Google wants to bring the second half of humanity online, along with any hardware vendor that cares to emphasise the bottom line.
I think they have a very good chance of succeeding.

My 2 cents.

Re:Where's the Linux phones?

[cyber-vandal]

Java, the COBOL of the 1990s

So wildly successful and used for shifting trillions of dollars around? Java has very little in common with COBOL, except features that all languages have in common. What should they have used instead of Java? The memory leak brothers C and C++? Javascript? LISP? FORTRAN?

The reason why phone apps are popular is because they're a lot easier to use and a lot more functional than web apps. How do you query your device's hardware from a browser? How do you turn the flash on and off? How do you receive notifications? How do you interface with OS functionality? Given that every phone comes with a browser how are you isolated from the web? Phone apps fill a need that web apps will never be able to because you can't give a browser full access to your device.

Re:Can they attract developers?

[gabebear]

As a mobile developer I'm drawn to Tizen because it doesn't have the cruft that Android does and is possibly even more open. I want a Tizen phone to play with. The SDK and tools look mature and the simulator works well. I like that you don't have a .Net/Java virtual machine in your way.

Despite Android having a much improved java engine, it's still lacking in a lot of ways:

• - no Java8 Lambda goodness on Android(and likely never will be)
• - Dalvik still has garbage collection slowdowns at inexplicable times...
• - To use native code you're running many things through the JNI, which is not elegant

no...

[envelope]

Betteridge's Law of Headlines again.

Maybe in China

[Nocturrne]

All Google services are blocked in China, so there are hundreds of millions of Android phones with no access to the play store. At the same time, most mobile phone manufacturers are designing their phones for the Chinese market and following Chinese trends. Tizen could do very well there. The communists think they are helping their own domestic tech companies, but they are really just helping Samsung and other non-googles.

Re:no...

[tbuddy]

Yep! And if you title your comment Betteridge's Law of Headlines you can get marked +5 insightful while contributing the same amount (nothing) to the conversation. Karma whoring is a beautiful thing.

Horrible Dev Environment

[Graydyn Young]

As a Tizen dev you get a bigger cut of sales... and it's not anywhere near worth it.

I once saw a full grown man in tears while he was trying to write a simple Tizen app.

I attended a Hackthon once where a team was trying to write a Tizen app, and at the end of the Hackathon none of them were speaking to each other.

Seriously, it's like pulling teeth. I've been an Android/IOS/Blackberry developer for more years than I care to admit, and I'd rather carve "Hello World!" into my own flesh than write it in Tizen.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[ArcadeMan]

Karma whoring is a beautiful thing.

Yes it is.

Re:no...

[unixisc]

If Samsung abandons Android for Tizen, it'll simply be surrendering the Android market to everyone else - Motorola, Sony, HTC, et al.

It's called Replicant

[unixisc]

What market gap does it fill?

As I see it, Android's big problem is privacy, we're just waiting for the time when politicians and journos realize that every App on their Android phone is tracking them, their kids, their families, and their personal and private lives.

When that happens, the public will get a rude wake up call, and so a fork of Android will likely be the next Android. A fork that is privacy focused.

Tizen at the moment can run Android apps, but then why wouldn't you simply fork Android and ditch the Google/Facebook/Skype/Samsung etc. spyware?

There is already a fork Android project out there w/ the goals you mentioned: it's called Replicant Not sure what state that project is in.

Re:It will be a mistake

[ThePhilips]

Samsung would never become Tizen-only shop. They would go on making all possible devices, Android and WinPho included.

Otherwise, Nokia lost its #1 position because they have failed to adapt their devices to new markets. That is precisely what Samsung tries to avoid with the Tizen. Since there is no Google to set the rules what can and cannot be an Android device and OS, Samsung (and others) can tweak Tizen to fit pretty much any device they like. After all, Tizen is larger than Samsung and is not exclusively a phone OS.