Tizen to Replace Android on Galaxy Gear 2

Samsung has prepared a couple of huge surprises for all the gadget enthusiasts out there. At this year’s MWC in Barcelona, South Korean consumer electronic giant is going to present not only the next flagship smartphone Galaxy S5, but also the next generation of its “smart” watches, called Galaxy Gear. Yet, the most intriguing part of the news is not in the fact of the mentioned device’s presentation, but the rumor that the watch will not be running Android OS.

According to the information provided by USA Today (obtained from some reliable insider sources), instead of Google’s mobile operating system, Samsung has decided to implement its own operating system, known as OS Tizen.

First official announcement about Tizen development was made in September 2011. It is a Linux kernel-based open source mobile operating system, actively developed and supported by Samsung. Tizen was formed in the process of merging MeeGo (a platform that Nokia has developed with Intel to move to Windows Phone) and LiMo. Later on, Samsung decided to merge Tizen with another OS of its own - bada. The project has already received the support of several major players in the mobile industry.

The upcoming new version of Tizen, which will be supporting HTML5, is going to be one of the key products during Samsung’s presentation evening on 24th of February at MWC.

The first version of the Galaxy Gear, presented in September 2013, is based on Android. Observers and experts have criticized the device for uninviting appearance, inconvenience of usage and quick battery consumption. Perhaps, the brand new OS Tizen will solve at least some of these problems.

According the same sources, Samsung intends to use Tizen in its “smart” watches, since it does want to contribute to Android’s popularity growth. Samsung’s software for mobile devices, especially the TouchWiz interface, is often becomes the target of criticism for its slow performance and unstable working of some of the “amazing” features. Nevertheless, the South Korean company is not about to abandon the ambition to become a competitor to Apple, Google and Microsoft, creating its own ecosystem of services and applications.

Today, the only device with Tizen that has officially been announced is Samsung’s camera NX300M. It is already available in South Korea, and according to Samsung, in comparison with other cameras, which firmware is based on Linux, NX300M loads twice as faster.