First Tizen smartphone to arrive earlier than anticipated

Tizen is here. It’s powering cameras, and it powers the latest Samsung Gear smartwatches, but we’re still waiting on it to debut on the form factor that could make or break it as a platform: Tizen on a smartphone. The idea of a Tizen phone has been teasing us for literally years by now, and it’s finally about to happen. Earlier this month we heard that Samsung intended to release its first Tizen smartphone by the end of the quarter, meaning we could be waiting until late June to see its debut. But now we’ve picked up on another report sourced to Samsung itself, indicating that the first Tizen phone will launch in Russia sometime this May.

Sure, that’s not a heck of a lot earlier than June, but considering how long we’ve been waiting for phones like this to go up for sale, we’re still quite anxious to see Samsung get the Tizen ball rolling. Following Russia, expect Samsung to bring Tizen to smartphone users in Brazil, and later additional nations – particularly those where it has at least an outside chance of disrupting the status quo.

We’ve heard of two Tizen models in Samsung’s immediate pipeline, both a higher-end model and one more mid-range, and while not quite confirmed, from what we’ve heard it sounds like the handset to debut in Russia next month will be the more capable of the pair. Now we just have to see what Samsung can get away charging for this guy.

Source: Tizen Indonesia (Google Translate)
Via: phoneArena