Update: Samsung launches Tizen-powered Samsung Z1 in Bangladesh.
After delaying the launch several times from several countries citing lack of support from developers and careers, the South Korean giant Samsung finally released its first ever smartphone Samsung Z1 that runs on Tizen operating system out of the box. A company executive in India recently said that the phone will be making its way to Bangladesh soon.
Tizen is a relatively new operating system that Samsung has been working on for the last few years in association with the likes of Intel and Huawei. After Bada OS failed to achieve much success, Samsung teamed up with other companies to develop a lightweight operating system to not only produce and capture low-end of the smartphone market but also to have a strong base other than Android, for which it has to depend on Google.
The Samsung Z1, released early this month in India, costs about $92 and comes with a 4-inch display, 1.2 GHz dual core processor and 768 MB of RAM and 4 GB of ROM. It has a 3.1 megapixel camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front. For the camera alone, the camera received largely negative reaction from reviewers and customers, some saying that it looks like a phone from 2010.
Despite that, Samsung says the phone received good reaction from the customers and the company will ramp up the production of the device, and manufacture more Tizen-powered smartphones. For now, Samsung Z1 in Bangladesh is going to happen very soon. Samsung India’s vice president of marketing said that the phone is headed to Bangladesh next. That will make Bangladesh the second country where Tizen-based smartphone Z1 is officially launched.
Samsung is in for heavy competition especially because of Android One — Google’s recent initiative to enter the market of smartphones on a budget through manufacturers. Google wants to deliver phones that do not have laggy performance and are not deprived of regular updates that run on Android. Samsung wants to deliver phones that run fast, have a good user interface and longer battery backup, and do not require Android. That’s basically Samsung and Google going head to head in low-end smartphone market in the battle of Tizen vs Android.
However, Tizen has a long way to go before it can even be considered a true competitor to Android. The operating system only runs on a handful of smartwatches and only one smartphone as of now. But Samsung said that the phone will be expanded into other countries including Bangladesh in the near future. Also, the manufacturing of Samsung’s Tizen-powered smartphones will also be done in India.
So, we as smartphone enthusiasts will get to see the competition of low-end smartphones heating up in the coming days.
This article also appears in Bangla on Android Kothon.
