Samsung's introduction of the lesser-known Tizen operating system on a select number of its phones is arguably one of the most intriguing developments to come out of the Mobile World Congress.
According to folks at Ars Technica who got to try it out, Tizen is very similar to Android. Using a prototype device at the event, they noticed a number of similarities to Android, such as an app drawer, panel for pull-down notifications, widgets, home screen pages and more. The button configuration - Menu, Back buttons and Homes - are similar to how they appear in Android phones, too.
However, the differences were noticeable as well. For instance, the gadgets were resizable; if they were shrunk into 1x1 squares, they became icons, while 2x2 squares became widgets. New applications were in a paginated grid rather than a scroll list and pressing the minus sign (not swiping away the thumbnail) removed the app. Finally, notifications were displayed in a grid of squares two wide instead of a list.
The prototype phone had Google Search and YouTube icons, though they were just links to the mobile sites.
From a developer's point of view, any experience with Java would not help much: development can only be done with HTML5 or native C++.
Perhaps Tizen's biggest challenge will be solving the catch-22 of app support, Ars Technica noted. Without any Tizen phones, programmers have no reason to code for the operating system. But without apps in place, recruiting customers will be a hard sale. And, according to the team, the phones do not appear to boast any special advantage as of yet.
"While Tizen isn't finished, at this point it seems like nothing more than an Android clone," they wrote. "Samsung has yet to demonstrate a compelling reason for anyone to pick a Tizen device over Android or even demonstrate why it chose to spend resources developing Tizen instead of creating a Google-less AOSP fork. Our best guess is that it has become a matter of pride for the company. With Android OEMs having to deal with extensive rules and restrictions dictated by Google, Samsung would like to control the software end-to-end."
