It’s a known fact that Samsung is one of the key members of the LiMo Foundation and in the past, have dabbled with few devices running LiMo OS. Now the news comes from LiMo and Linux Foundation that they have come together to develop a new open-source OS called Tizen. Tizen will be an open-source project that will integrate the code of LiMo and MeeGo with standards support of HTML5 and WAC.

Both Samsung and Intel will lead the technical steering team, which indicates the future of the OS will most likely be in the hands of both these companies.

More interestingly, bada 2.0 SDK recently added support for HTML5 and WAC. Does that mean bada will integrate elements of Tizen or completely replace bada 2.0? We don’t know yet. But I think it should be more clear by next year.

Tizen’s first SDK will be released in Q1 2012 and devices in mid-2012.

Tizen OS

South Korea ministry today announced that they’ll develop their own open-source smartphone OS to give local smartphone makers “competitiveness” against foreign smartphone OS makers. The details on how and what the OS will be are unknown but the Korean ministry said such a move will help manufacturers like Samsung, LG to compete against Apple’s iOS and even Google’s Android OS. Samsung was hesitant at first to co-develop the open-source platform but changed their decision after Google announced the acquisition of Motorola.

The government plans to infuse some capital and start the joint project before the end of this year.

A week back, Samsung’s Lee Kun-hee had emphasized on software competitiveness in order to succeed in the Electronics business.

UPDATE: Samsung has apparently denied their association for the development of the smartphone OS. Thanks, MovePlayer!

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Samsung has released a new update to bada’s recently released v1.2 SDK. The new v1.2.1 bundles an error checker to check potential errors that could occur during packaging of the app.

Another interesting development is the introduction of in-app advertising. Developers can now monetize and earn revenues from their app starting Jan 1, 2011. All the advertising revenue earned via the in-app advertising belongs to the developer and is not shared by Samsung.

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Samsung’s Mobile Innovator just sent another email reminding us that they’ll officially stop supporting the Symbian platform after tomorrow. The Symbian Lab for developers was closed in October whereas the Symbian forum and content related to the OS will be removed today and tomorrow respectively.

Samsung hasn’t confirmed if they’ll support Symbian in the future but considering the current state of Symbian and uptake of Android, the chances look really slim.

Well it was moments ago we posted about Samsung’s uncertainty for Galaxy S’ Gingerbread update but it seems Galaxy S users will eventually get it. Samsung Mobile India’s official twitter account has confirmed that Gingerbread (not gingerbeard!) will arrive for Galaxy S.

However the confirmation does not divulge the exact timeframe.

Twitter Account

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Samsung has confirmed to Reuters that they’re developing a joint software platform that will be compatible with both TV and mobile phones. Kyungsik Kevin Lee, vice president at Samsung’s Visual Display Division said they’ve plans “to have a single platform for Samsung TV and phones.”

Lee hasn’t shed any more details on it except that it’s still in development and will be created to lure app developers.

We’re not sure if Lee is referring to an altogether different platform or maybe extend bada OS to internet-enabled televisions.

Samsung’s Smart TV initiative currently works with Samsung’s 2010 range of TVs, Blu-ray players and Home Theater systems.

If you had any doubts in Samsung’s decision to drop Symbian, well, its Mobile Innovators site for developers have made it official. In an email sent by Samsung Mobile Innovators states that all Symbian-related support on its site will be removed by end of this year.

Samsung’s Symbian Lab.dev will be closed down on October 29 followed by the Symbian forum on December 30 and finally removal of all the Symbian content on December 31.

Samsung Mobile Innovator

Looks like Samsung is temporarily dropping Symbian from its multi-OS strategy. Claiming “no visible demand for Symbian,” YH Lee, head of marketing at Samsung Mobile confirmed that they have not planned any Symbian devices for now but will launch if they see some consumer demand.

Meanwhile, Samsung also made it clear that they’re being bullish on Android for all their smartphone needs whereas bada will play the role to bring smartphone-like experience to lower-priced handsets.

“We are prioritising our Android platform. Android is very open and flexible, and there is a consumer demand for it.”

As for Windows Phone 7, Samsung might only make WP7 devices targeted at business users because WP7 has a “professional, specialized demand.”

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UPDATE: The v1.0.0b3 now supports Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong), Chinese Traditional (Taiwan) languages. Language support for Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Urdu and Vietnamese will be added soon.

Samsung has just updated the bada SDK for all developers. The SDK, still in beta, now stands at 1.0.0b3 and contains features like:

- Target development environment for implementing bada applications on device.
- Language supports for following 35 languages:
Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. Additional languages such as Chinese, South East and Middle East Asian languages will be provided in short period of time.
- Various tools such as IDE, UI Builder, Simulator and debugger.
- Plenty of APIs
- Helpful documents and useful code samples

Download bada SDK from here.

As promised, the site that originally leaked info on the LiMo-powered I8330 H2 has published some pictures of the same. There’s not much on the design front, just a little facelift with a different placement of the camera at the back but the interesting thing is the specs, which are powerful enough to pip the predecessor.

The rumored specs read: LiMo R3 OS, full touchscreen display, 1GHz CPU, 8MP camera with full HD video recording support, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and HSDPA. Not to forget it will also be loaded with Vodafone’s 360 service.

The availability is expected sometime around the FIFA World Cup, which means the announcement could come pretty soon.

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