Samsung continues to fuel energy into Tizen, its 3.5-year-old homegrown operating system. The South Korean technology conglomerate - which makes a lot of money selling Google's Android-powered smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches - on Thursday announced new tools for Tizen developers that will enable them to make better and more powerful applications.
At its annual Tizen Developer Summit event in Bengaluru, the company shared the roadmap of the software advancements it has in store for its developers. Samsung announced new Tizen SDKs (software development kits) for smartwatches, smartphones, and smart TVs.
The new SDK for smartwatches, dubbed Tizen 2.3.1 comes with APIs that will allow developers to make apps for circular watch faces. Furthermore, developers will also be able to make use of a rotating bezel, which as Samsung says, can be used in many intuitive ways like changing the date and time. The announcement unwittingly confirms the long rumours of a circular face smartwatch from Samsung that is purported to run Tizen.
Coming to the smartphones, Samsung announced Tizen 2.4.B. It comes with several interesting features including DALi (Dynamic Animation Library). The engine pushes the 3D rendering capability to a new height, resulting in better looking interfaces. This is the same engine the company used in its flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones. Samsung assures that this capability will come to affordable Tizen smartphones.
Other features include baked-in support for floating action button and more contextual integration. The company also announced a new service for Tizen smartphones. Called Cloudbox, it is a files and settings backup service. The company says it will allow developers to integrate their cloud-based services into Cloudbox.
Samsung also announced a new SDK for Tizen-based TVs. The company is making APIs available to developers that will allow them to make web apps and support for various in-app integrations. The apps will be able to utilize HTML, JS and CSS technologies.
The theme of this year's developer conference is largely to bolster third-party integration with system apps. The company continues to aggressively attract app developers by remaining committed to give them 100 percent cut on the revenues their apps generate.
Disclosure: The correspondent has travelled to the Tizen Developer Summit at Samsung's expense.
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