Samsung Electronics has started selling its first Tizen smartphone in India, priced at 5,700 Indian rupees (€78).
The Z1 runs the open-source Tizen operating system backed by Samsung and other vendors including Intel, and which already powers some of the South Korean company’s wearables and TVs.
Samsung announced a different Tizen smartphone, the Z, in June, ahead of the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco. It said then that it would launch it first in Russia, in the third quarter of 2014, but that phone never appeared.
The Z1 has relatively low-end specs compared to the planned Z, which was to have a 4.8″ HD Super AMOLED display and a 2.3GHz quad-core application processor, indicating that Samsung has shifted its focus with Tizen to the low end of the market, a booming segment in India and other emerging markets.
The Z1 runs Tizen 2.3 and has a 4″, 480×800 pixel screen and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. It has 768Mb of RAM and 4Gb of internal storage, expandable by up to 64Gb with a microSD card. Samsung claims the 1500mAh battery will play video for 7 hours or provide 8 hours of talk time.
Available in white, black and wine red, the smartphone has a 3.1MP rear camera and a VGA front camera with face detection software.
With a nod to growing concerns about the security of women in India, following several cases of alleged rape in the country, Samsung has also featured in the Z1 a SOS alert. Users have to press the power button four times for the Samsung Z1 to send out a ‘help’ message to the user’s primary contacts and track the user’s location to provide necessary assistance.
IDG News Service
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