Samsung Divorces Android and Reveals the First Tizen Phone

Having teased its new proprietary smartphone operating system – Tizen – for some time now, Samsung pulls the curtain off its first ever Tizen-based phone – the Samsung Z. Breaking away from its partnership with Android, the Z will feature a 4.9-inch, 720p HD Super AMOLED display with a quad-core 2.3GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of memory, LTE connectivity, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2.1-magapixel front-facing camera, a heart rate sensor, and fingerprint scanner. Designed in collaboration with IBM, Tizen – which already runs on Samsung’s Galaxy Gear watches – will appear slightly similar to Android, especially when viewing the app drawer, notification tray and homescreen widgets. The smartphone maker further asserts that Tizen will provide faster start-up times, better multitasking abilities, quicker web browsing, and a more intuitive layout. Although the Samsung Z will be officially unveiled at this week’s Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco, it likely won’t hit the market until later this year.