How do you take over an already crowded market when nobody knows your name? Answer: Stealth and a big-name backer, promoting your every move. Samsung wants Tizen to take over where Android left off and now that the company has shown off a few Tizen smartphone prototypes, Samsung's dream sounds more realistic than ever before.
Tizen may look like an Android clone clad in Samsung's TouchWiz UI right now, but it won't always be that way. In fact, when you take a closer look at Tizen, you'll actually notice that it is much more simple and deceptively elegant than you might think at first glance. Tizen is clean, responsive and fast. The average smartphone user could easily pick up one of Samsung's Tizen smartphone prototypes and have no idea that it's not running Android.
Like Android, Tizen has widgets, an app drawer, customization options and even the same basic button layout: Home, Back and Menu. Tizen has a pull-down notification bar, multiple home screens and even runs most of the same apps, thanks to Infraware, an app that takes Android apps and helps developers convert them into Tizen apps. You'd never know the difference, if it weren't for a few key changes that make Tizen unique and intriguing.
App icons are round instead of square, making the Tizen app drawer look like it's filled with lots of tiny bubbles, all lined up in rows. The widgets are expandable and act like app icons. When you swipe down on a widget, it expands t show you the full app. Tizen also allows you to turn app icons into widgets much more easily. All you have to do is expand the app icon to 2x2 and it will transform into a widget. Creating widgets on Android isn't that simple. Additionally, if you want to turn a widget back into an app icon, you just bring its size down to 1x1 and voila! You have a small bubbly icon again.
Tizen also features a new selection of so-called mini apps. When you hold down the back button, a series of mini apps pop up on your screen. Mini apps like camera float around on your screen until you choose one and then it opens, just like a regular app. It seems like the mini apps will be things you use frequently, like the camera, flashlight, etc.
The notification menu on Tizen is very different from the one on Android, too. Notifications show up in a grid made up of two squares, instead of in list form. Settings look different, as well, appearing in grid and list form from one page to another. Developers will make apps for Tizen using HTML 5 or C++, rather than Java, so it might be a bit difficult for developers to remake Android apps for Tizen. Still, Samsung is a pretty big heavy-weight in the mobile industry, so it will probably assert its influence to encourage developers to devote a bit of time to Tizen.
Aside from these minor alterations, Tizen looks an awful lot like Android. Although making Tizen into an Android clone may sound crazy, it's actually genius. Samsung is being stealthy. It plans to merge its vision of what Android should be with what Tizen will be and then, when the two operating systems look nearly identical on Samsung devices, switch over to Tizen, leaving Android high and dry. That way, average customers won't even know the difference.
Tizen, Android - So what? I don't see any difference. Exactly.
Samsung has already pulled this trick with its new Galaxy Gear smartwatch collection. When it launches Samsung smartphones with Tizen onboard later this year, the difference will only be noticeable in two ways: a slight limitation in terms of what apps you can download and the minor alterations in the user interface we've seen from the Tizen prototypes.
It's also worth noting that the Tizen Samsung debuted at MWC 2014 still isn't fully polished or ready for launch. Once it is, the pitfalls may already be taken care of. It will be interesting to see where customers' brand loyalties lie. Will they side with Android or Samsung? Their answer will depend on what is more important to them: Samsung's hardware or Android's software. If Tizen is comparable to Android and in some ways better than Android, it won't even be a contest.
