After several rumors and several reports of a delay, Samsung has finally announced its very first commercial Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z.
Talking about the hardware first, the Samsung Z comes with the same leather faux design, we first saw on the Note 3. Thankfully, it looks different than those plethora of Samsung smartphones. It is rectangular in design but the other things are reminiscent of the Samsung design language. Like there’s a hardware home button along with menu and back capacitive keys, which is identical to Samsung’s older Android offerings. The Samsung Z measures 138.2 x 69.8 x 8.5mm and it is pretty light at 136 grams.
The first Tizen smartphone features a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display of HD (1280x720p) resolution. It is powered by a 2.3 GHz Quad-Core processor coupled with 2 gigs of RAM. While Samsung has not revealed the name of the chipset, we guess it’s one of the beasts from Qualcomm. There’s 16 GB of internal storage with microSD expansion up to 64 GB.
On the camera front, the device features a 8 MP rear camera with flash and on the front, there’s a 2.1 MP camera. The connectivity is well covered with high speed LTE Cat.4 (150/50Mbps) support. Other connectivity options include WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n HT40, MIMO(2×2), GPS / GLONAS, Bluetooth 4.0, USB: USB 2.0, NFC and IR Remote blaster. A 2600 mAh battery powers the Samsung Z. The device also comes with a fingerprint scanner in tow.
The Samsung Z runs on the open source Tizen software and Tizen 2.2.1 runs the show here. From the looks of it, it seems Tizen has been skinned to match Samsung’s Android TouchWiz interface. Samsung claims that Tizen offers better startup times, faster multitasking, better web browsing performance. Tizen brings “a distinctive home and application layout, for easy access to favorite features and apps. Using Dynamic Box and Color Theme settings, users can tailor their device to what suits them best.” The device also comes with the Ultra Power Saving mode, Download Booster we first saw in the Galaxy S5.
Samsung plans to offer additional apps at the Tizen Store at the time of the Samsung Z launch. Samsung will also celebrate the launch of the device by offering a special promotional program to all Tizen developers for one year. The South Korean giant will also host app challenges in Russia and CIS countries to make sure the number of apps are satisfactory for the Samsung Z launch.
Samsung has scheduled a Tizen Developers Conference from June 3rd in San Francisco, where they will showcase the Samsung Z. As it was rumored, the first Tizen smartphone will come to Russia at first. The device will first hit the Russian markets in Q3 this year and it should become available in more regions gradually. It will be available in Black and Gold variants. Samsung hasn’t revealed the price of the device yet.
The Samsung Z apart from the display is a high end device and the hardware is good enough but we are most interested in the software. Although it’s a shame that Tizen has been skinned to look similar to Samsung’s Android interface but things should be different in the user experience department. Well, we can’t wait to check things out for ourselves but we’ll have to wait for quite some time. Till then. tell us what you think of the Samsung Z, the first Tizen smartphone?
Samsung Z Specs:
- 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display
- HD (1280x720p) resolution
- 138.2 x 69.8 x 8.5mm, 136 grams
- 2.3 GHz Quad-core processor
- 2 GB RAM
- 16 GB internal storage
- microSD expansion up to 64 GB
- 8 MP rear camera with flash
- 2.1 MP front facing camera
- Tizen 2.2.1
- 2600 mAh battery
- LTE Cat 4 (150/50Mbps), WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n HT40, MIMO(2×2), GPS / GLONAS, Bluetooth 4.0, USB: USB 2.0, NFC and IR Remote
