Andre Yoskowitz
15 Jan 2012 19:13
Samsung has announced it will merge its own touchscreen OS, Bada, with the Linux-based Tizen OS.
Tizen is a joint collaboration between Intel and Samsung. Tizen was born from the ashes of MeeGo, which was an Intel-Nokia smartphone OS before Nokia left it for dead and jumped to Windows Phone.
Samsung launched Bada in 2010 in an effort to update the operating system on their low-end smartphones and their touchscreen feature phones. The OS has multi-tasking, an app store and a completely rehauled UI that looks somewhat similar to Android.
Over 10 million Bada devices were sold last year, making it a marginal success for the company.
Bada will fold into Tizen, but all current apps and the SDK is backward compatible with the new OS. There is a chance that Bada devices, like the Wave phone, will be updated to Tizen later this year via an OTA update.
Samsung says it will launch two Tizen phones in 2012.