Samsung to unveil Tizen devices (smartphones?) at a pre-MWC 2014 event on February 23

Two Tizen-based devices have already been announced this year, but they’re not really important: a tablet aimed at developers and a camera (Samsung NX300M) that’s currently available only in South Korea can’t properly promote the new platform. But the companies backing Tizen, led by Samsung and Intel, are poised to show the world what the new OS is capable of in February.

According to IT News, Tizen backers sent out invitations to a press conference that will take place in Barcelona on February 23, just one day before MWC 2014 debuts. Reportedly, participants will be provided with "an exclusive sneak preview of the newest Tizen devices as well as an opportunity to learn about the major milestones that the Tizen project has hit since last year's event."

Although this hasn’t been specifically mentioned, at least one of these new Tizen devices will almost certainly be a Samsung-made smartphone (running Tizen 3.0 - which isn’t released yet). Samsung said more than once that it intends to introduce Smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems based on Tizen, so we might also see some of these on February 23.

The world’s first Tizen smartphone was initially supposed to be launched this year. But Samsung probably decided that the OS was still not mature enough for a commercial handset.

It’s not clear at which consumers the Tizen smartphones will be targeted. However, at least some of them, which will apparently run a Lite version of Tizen, should be aimed at the same category of users who would buy Firefox OS phones, or cheap Android and Windows Phone handsets.

We’re looking forward to seeing what Tizen can bring to the smartphone market. It may very well be a short-lived platform - just like Bada was. Sure enough, some of Bada’s remnants are included in Tizen, but that doesn’t mean much for it as an OS. It’s still defunct. Anyway, we’ll see what happens with Tizen in February.

source: IT News