Samsung has begun rolling out an update to the Galaxy Gear that will bring over Tizen, the company’s in-house OS, to the smartwatch. The update carries software version 2.2.0, and while the entire OS will be replaced, most users won’t notice any visual differences. However, quite a few improvements and new features are to be had – improved performance and battery life, features such as an standalone music player (you can store music on the watch itself), customizable shortcuts for tap input, voice commands in the camera, among others.
I’m still waiting on the Tizen phones Samsung has been promising for years. Even though it’s essentially ‘TouchWiz OS’ (in other words, cringe-worthy), it’s still an alternative operating system I would love to play with.
Tizen has one killer feature. All devices are required to be upgradeable by the end user. The minimum hardware requirements are quite high meaning that a Tizen phone or tablet will have the potential to be upgraded to the latest version for a number of years.
Source? I find it too good to believe. If your SoC manufacturer doesn’t release new drivers for the newest kernel version, your phone isn’t going to be upgraded.
2.16.
Software Update
The system MUST provide a mechanism for updating system
software.
“Live†updating (not requiring a reboot) is not mandatory.
When updating software, user data, application private
data, and application shared data MUST be preserved.
https://source.tizen.org/sites/default/files/page/tizen-2.0-complian…
I assume that all Tizen phones will be sold unlocked with no carrier modifications. Updates will be handled by the manufacturer.
Tizen is basically a preinstalled Linux distro with an unlockable bootloader and mandatory vendor updates. If you aren’t willing to provide the drivers you can’t get a Tizen licence.
This really only tells us that the mechanism to update must be available. There’s nothing about it actually being used, so this is no better then Android as far as I can read from this (Android has the whole update.zip stuff in the API and the recovery environment for applying it).
Many Android phones and most Android tablets cannot be upgraded without hacking. This involves unlocking the ROM, backing up data and installing an unsupported custom ROM. This risks bricking and data loss and voids the warranty.
Tizen devices must be upgradeable via OTA or PC based software officially supported by the vendor.
Their is simply no comparison between the two scenarios.
You’re not reading what I’m typing. Nothing needs to be unlocked to update an Android device, the only limiting factor (which makes things difficult for e.g. CM) is that the updates are required to be signed with the same key as the Android build was signed with.
I fail to see anything in the linked document that says that this is different on Tizen, or at least _forbidden_ on Tizen.
Since the signature check is a _security_ measure, not just for fun, I fail to see the difference still.
Had they kept native Qt programming from MeeGo, I’d be enthused. Dropping that dropped Tizen to the bottom of my interest list.
But not OFF my list. 😉
Same here.
I really don’t get the point to re-use the brain dead BADA API with its Symbian C++ influence, instead of Qt.
That is an universe I don’t miss.
Admittedly I have only seen the brief video you linked to but the UI looked fine. Some of the gestures seems a little slow but that could have been:
– The small screen
– The user wasn’t using it one their wrist so it may have been a bit off
– Or maybe it is actually slow
But I see nothing cringeworthy…