A new version of Samsung’s Tizen OS, version 4.0, is now under development for mobile devices, wearables and smart gadgets and is due for release in September.
Tizen is mainly used in Samsung products. The release date of Tizen 4.0 is listed on the OS’s developer website, which also states that the first beta of the OS will come out in June.
The Tizen 4.0 release date is listed as part of the Tizen .NET roadmap. The page states that “the first official version of Tizen .NET will be released in September 2017 as a part of Tizen 4.0.”
The page went up recently, and an image detailing the roadmap seems to have typographical errors. The chart is supposed to show a timeline for Tizen .NET releases extending into 2017, but the release date of Tizen 4.0 is listed for September 2016, in an apparent mistake.
Tizen is a competitor of iOS and Android, but has struggled. The OS is in a handful of Samsung smartphones in India, but the handsets are stuck at version 2.4.
Samsung’s smart TVs and smartwatches like Gear S3 also use Tizen. The OS will be used in the company’s home appliances, washing machines, and even vacuum cleaners.
Most of Samsung’s smartphones have Android today, but it is maintaining Tizen, as it doesn’t want to put all its eggs in one basket. Samsung is developing technology so its Android mobile devices, Windows PCs and Tizen devices can easily communicate with one another.
Tizen has also been ported to work on boards like Raspberry Pi and the Artik developer board.
Tizen may be Samsung’s ticket to success in the internet of things market, where competitive OSes include Google’s Android Things and Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core. Tizen 3.0 already supports Open Connectivity Foundation’s emerging IoTivity protocol, designed for easy pairing of compatible devices.
Shipments of IoT devices will outstrip smartphones in the coming years, touching 30.7 billion by 2020, and 75.4 billion by 2025, according to IHS.
With Tizen 4.0 so close, Samsung is moving on quickly from Tizen 3.0, which hasn’t made it to many devices yet.
Tizen 3.0 was portrayed as a powerful 64-bit OS compatible with ARM and x86 processors, with support for 4K graphics and image and speech recognition. Samsung claimed Tizen 3.0 was 30 percent faster than Tizen 2.4.
Tizen 4.0 will have richer features and be faster than its predecessor. It’ll also be a beneficiary to Microsoft’s embrace of open-source technologies.
In November, Samsung announced a pact with Microsoft framed to allow .Net developers to easily write Tizen applications for mobile devices, smartwatches, smart TVs and IoT devices. Samsung is releasing previews of Tizen .NET to make that possible, and will bake a final version of related tools into Tizen 4.0.
The origins of Tizen date back to 2007, when Intel started developing the Linux-based Moblin OS. In 2010, Moblin was merged with Nokia’s Maemo into a new OS called Meego. That OS was then merged with LiMo to form Tizen. Tizen is considered Samsung’s OS, but the development is managed by the Linux Foundation.