back to article Samsung in a TIZZY: OH PLEASE make apps for our Tizen Z mobe

Samsung has unveiled the Samsung Z, a quad-core Tizen OS smartphone that's fuelled the rumour mill for months. The mobe is powered by an operating system championed by the Linux Foundation. It will appeal to network operators that want to tout apps, and object to Google and Apple taking revenue from software sold through …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BadaOS all over again.

    What's BadaOS you may say....

    Exactly....

    Without apps, Tizen,(and BadaOS before it), Windows Phone all just stack up in the queue of failed mobile operating systems.

    1. petur
      FAIL

      Re: BadaOS all over again.

      Except Bada was mostly the shell, and a very bad one, running on an OS. IIRC not all Bada phones even ran linux at all.

      So comparing Tizen with Bada is not quite correct - its roots are actually Meego (Maemo + Moblin).

      And suddenly I'm looking at this phone and hope it can go the same way as n900 as a linux phone so I can replace my aging n900 :)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: BadaOS all over again.

      Tizer, Ubuntu, Firefox, Sailfish... all using a common and open app framework. An end to mobe-vendor lock-in? Selecting devices by little niceties like price, utility and preference rather than by which cartel's weapon* is the most swollen.

      Sounds quite nice to me.

      Perhaps, if seen as a bloc rather than a smattering of insignificant quaint projects, they stand a chance of gaining some traction. I for one certainly hope so!

      *i.e. "App-store" - that is what they're all about, after all.

    3. LarsG

      Late

      So late to the table that the washing up has been done, the plates put away and the scraps are inside the dog.

    4. ThomH

      Re: BadaOS all over again.

      Bada's issues were more deeply ingrained than mere unpopularity. It was the endpoint of Samsung's decade-or-so of internal phone OSes and wore its baggage on its sleeve. It used a weird alternative history version of C++ (i.e. no STL, containers and primitives custom to Samsung, no exceptions, Samsung's own invention of two-step construction to try to bridge the difference) and the developer tools left a great deal to be desired (as in: I never once got the debugger to attach).

      If they're pushing a higher level language and/or an up-to-date version of whichever language it is, with development tools that work properly, then they've already learnt a lot from the last endeavour.

    5. SuccessCase

      Re: BadaOS all over again.

      Samsung have successfully skated to where the puck was about 3 years ago, and now rather comically are trying to take a shot.

    6. Spoddyhalfwit

      Re: BadaOS all over again.

      "Without apps, Tizen,(and BadaOS before it), Windows Phone all just stack up in the queue of failed mobile operating systems."

      Bit silly to include windows phone in that list... Might have been true a year or two back but now there are loads, and just like android and iOS it's all the major ones people actually use and then hundreds of thousands of fart machines and the like.

      Will be interesting to see if Samsung can do what MS did and get devs to fill their AppStore. I'm not too sure they can... All the time android is so massive for them I don't see them pushing Tizen hard enough.

      1. RyokuMas
        Facepalm

        Re: BadaOS all over again.

        @Spoddyhalfwit - you've been on these forums for a few years now, you should know that the Google shills and AC "because it's Microsoft" hate brigade will use the slightest possible chance to take a swipe at anything Microsoft, whether it's on-topic or not.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    App Revenue?

    "The mobe is powered by an operating system championed by the Linux Foundation – and will appeal to network operators who object to Google and Apple taking revenue from apps sold through Google Play and iTunes."

    I'm sure the operators would much prefer Samsung to take all the from apps.

    1. bhtooefr

      Re: App Revenue?

      What that sentence means is that Samsung's customers for this device aren't the end users, they're the carriers.

      It's trying to go back to the bad old days of carrier-run app stores for dumbphones. (At least in the US, every carrier had their own app store with horrendously overpriced wallpapers, ringtones, and horrible J2ME apps, and some of the carriers even blocked installation of third-party ringtones and J2ME apps on their own phones. And, some carriers didn't even allow you to bring your own phone (and two of the four major carriers in the US aren't GSM, so it's not as easy as slapping a SIM card in, especially back then). Samsung likely won't have anything to do with these stores, either.)

    2. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: App Revenue?

      A network operator CEO, speaking at MWC 2014, said he was fed up of Apple and Google getting all the action, suggesting operators want in on the app shop cash. That's our reading of the situation.

      Some may say that's a courageous move on the part of the cell networks.

      C.

      1. frank ly

        Re: App Revenue?

        " ...operators want in on the app shop cash."

        The water company want to sell me high priced multicoloured perfumed toilet paper, but they're just plumbing infrastructure people and ought to settle down and get used to it.

      2. dotdavid
        FAIL

        Re: App Revenue?

        "A network operator CEO, speaking at MWC 2014, said he was fed up of Apple and Google getting all the action"

        Operator-run app stores will always suffer as they'll invariably try to lock in users to their own networks and probably charge more than Apple and Google anyway. Why would customers want to be locked into their current operator's network and pay more for their apps?

        Customers have proved they don't mind being locked into something, true, but that has been platform (Android or IOS) rather than network as at least the major smartphone platforms are quite good. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the operators' networks. That's not to say that situation will never change, but I can't see operators investing enough or changing enough to seriously challenge the status quo.

        No, they'll just pin their hopes on another smaller OS like Tizen simply because they can pre-install their own app store and reap the profits, and hope that customers don't get annoyed that they're locked into a niche overpriced app ecosystem where they can't run any of the apps they've bought for previous phones or indeed on previous operator's networks. That'll work.

      3. Steven Raith

        Re: App Revenue?

        I strongly approve.

        Sir Humphrey and Bernard discuss how best to 'advise' the Minister:

        Sir Humphrey: If you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous".

        Bernard: And that's worse than "controversial"?

        Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!

        1. os2baba

          Re: App Revenue?

          I strongly approve of this comment - or any comment referencing Yes Minister :-)

      4. Nasty Nick

        Re: App Revenue?

        The app makers, phone manufacturers, network operators and phone designers would all like to grab all the action (our cash) for themselves and screw us, the customers, over royally, and if they can get away with it that's just what they do.

        Move along now - nothing courageous to see here folks..

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Price

    Anything beyon £99 will be a disaster. Google has already upped the game with Vanilla Android at below £99 ( Motg and Mot E).

    OK some extra marks for the Hardware......

    But then ?

    Let them not do a BB and HP tablets . Hoping to do an Apple at Apple prices ? Fat chance

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Price

      100 quid for that hardware? You must be a commentard with money to burn.

    2. Don Jefe

      Re: Price

      Price alone is rarely a factor if something delivers what people want and figuring out what they want is the difference between a successful and a not successful company and its products. If people truly want something they'll find the money to buy it. Like the guy who never drinks at the pub, but spends four weeks every year stumbling across Islay. People always find the money.

      Where price becomes a really big factor is when the offerings are all mediocre and nearly identical. It does what it says on the tin, but doesn't have any exceptional features; it's a commodity. Then the price makes an enormous difference. People will buy what's cheaper and go on about their business. However, if something has features people want, or that make the reseller money, then price is almost a non-issue.

  4. gautam

    Who wants a Tizzy?

    When competitiors are offering this:

    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2347622/computex-acer-eyes-motorola-with-eur79-liquid-z200-android-smartphone

    1. RyokuMas
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Who wants a Tizzy?

      Depends... it is pure Android, or still poisoned with Google's spyware crap?

      1. Stephen 2

        Re: Who wants a Tizzy?

        Neither.. it's Tizen.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The new Samsung Jet ?

    no support, no updates, no point

  6. Glostermeteor

    Looks great, can it run Android apps?

    Because if not, what on earth am I supposed to do with the apps I have already paid for on my Android phone? (Samsung Android phone at that!).

    There lies Samsung's problem in convincing people to switch.

    1. Stephen 2

      Re: Looks great, can it run Android apps?

      Apparently it can run android apps with 'a little work'. Why bother? It will be like the Blackberry Playbook where you could kinda, just about, sorta get android apps to work.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looks great, can it run Android apps?

      What about CP/M? Or DOS?

      I have literally no apps on my Samsung SIII-mini that I would miss other than a basic browser and this thing has something a bit up from that.

    3. RyokuMas
      Trollface

      Re: Looks great, can it run Android apps?

      "what on earth am I supposed to do with the apps I have already paid for on my Android phone?"

      You paid for Android apps? People actually do that?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looks great, can it run Android apps?

      The target market isn't people who are heavily invested in Android, but people who are buying their first smartphone, or previously owned a low end Android and have no real attachment to it.

      Since there's no money to be made selling really cheap phones, Samsung doesn't want to sell Android phones to that market. Google is the only winner there. They want to take the ad revenue from them for themselves.

  7. Robert E A Harvey

    Losing track

    Is this the thing that used to be palm? or something to do with Nokia and Intel? I can't remember any of these things any more.

  8. Yugguy

    I like my Samsung devices, but if they move from Android and don't make a way for Tizen to run an android app then it might well be goodbye from me.

    1. Don Jefe

      They aren't going to move away from Android. At least not anytime soon. That would just be stupid. With Android they are making money and can focus on developing alternative OSs that, hopefully, meet and exceed customer desires instead of being forced to get something to market because they're losing billions in revenue.

      Dropping Android would be like if you were in the limo on the way to wed the kings daughter but you spontaneously decide to bludgeon her to death in the backseat instead and still show up at the wedding.

  9. thomas k.
    Thumb Up

    Finally!

    A nice-looking Samsung phone.

  10. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Angel

    What are these "Apps" you speak of? Do they make the phone work better?

    1. Don Jefe

      Not exactly. Most of them enable some sort of annoying behavior that is always accompanied by various beeps, tweets, pings and zips that let you know the user is either insanely annoying, or incredibly high, and getting to know them at this juncture probably isn't in your best interest.

      So apps make other people's phones work better for you :)

    2. Chairo
      Windows

      What are these "Apps" you speak of? Do they make the phone work better?

      Thanks to Amazon's "free app of the day" offer, I have some 250 android apps on my phone. About 4 to 5 I regularly use. Of these, one has recently been sent into update land by adding a stupid, unusable interface and annoying advertisement. (Similar to what happened to Skype on android). The others are games.

      I don't see them making the phone work better. It sure works slower, however.

  11. Lars Silver badge
    Happy

    Perhaps

    As far as I understand they have to pay MS for using Android and depend on Google, and for using WinPhone they pay and depend on MS. Perhaps they want to become more independent. I cannot blame them. Personally my next will probably be a Jolla if my Nokia ever decides to die. As for the Apps, haven't got any, ignorance is a bliss I suppose, still the fart app caught my imagination.

    What apps are people actually using.

  12. Domino

    Hmmm.. HTML5 phone apps don't shout lock in to me.. Unless net neutrality fails, in which case providers may well offer their own apps data transfer as included with phone contract and internet access under additional data package fees.. Financial lock in is far cheaper to implement than technological lock in after all..

  13. DerekCurrie
    Facepalm

    Is it 64-bit?

    NO.

    Out of the running.

  14. Moosh
    Paris Hilton

    Seems a bit strange to try to push a phone as powerful (otherwise why highlight the 2.3 ghz quad core processor) and having good memory and then slapping a less than HD screen on it.

    People tend to want both nowadays. In fact, they tend to expect it.

    I myself am not a PPI proponent, but lots of people are.

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