On the first weekend of January 2022, when our little friends of Sanyi Life were idle and brushing the news, there was a fairly short message that caught our attention. It shows that from January 2022, the Samsung Tizen system will officially close the application store, and existing users can no longer download Tizen application software through official channels.
Seriously, if you've been following the smartphone industry for less than 5 years, you probably don't even know what this message is about. But for some friends, the "weight" of this information may be quite heavy. Because although Tizen is almost no longer famous now, it can be called the most "rooted" mobile Linux operating system in history, whether in terms of its technical characteristics or the "pedigree" of the inheritance.
The birth of Tizen is a "history of technology mergers" of giants.
If you trace Tizen's "pedigree", you will find that it can be regarded as a "super fit" of several giants' self-developed systems.
With Maemo's Nokia N810, it is possible that many old users of Nokia phones have never been exposed
First, Nokia began working on the Maemo system for its own MID (mobile Internet device, which is today's tablet prototype) that Nokia began to develop in 2005.
Second, Intel began research and development in 2007 for the MID and early "netbook" Mobin system.
Then, in 2007, there was the Linux Foundation that began to promote the Linux Mobile (LiMo) system, which aims to explore the technical possibilities of Linux on the mobile side. And it is worth mentioning that Samsung was once a strong supporter of the LiMo system, and even launched a high-end product equipped with this system, "Vodafone 360".
Finally, of course, Samsung's own self-developed system "Bada" based on the underlying Linux since 2009. According to Justin Hong, then chief architect of BADA and vice president of Samsung Mobile Phones, Samsung has been preparing the Bada system for more than 10 years, and it has indeed received more than 5,000 third-party apps just one year after its launch.
However, what even Samsung itself may not have thought of is that the entire smartphone operating system market "suddenly changed" in 2010. First, Nokia and Intel announced that they would "merge" Maemo and Mobin into the Meego system.
Samsung's last high-end product based on the Bada system: the Galaxy Wave3
Then, as Nokia shifted its strategic focus to Windows Mobile in 2011, dominance of the Meego system was handed over to the Linux Foundation. At this time, the Linux Foundation actually has two sets of mobile phone systems at hand, one is Meego, which originated from Nokia and Intel, but has been abandoned, and the other is LiMo, which has been injected with a lot of technology by Samsung, NEC, Panasonic and other manufacturers, but has long been "cool".
So after a call, Meego, LiMo, and Samsung's own Linux-based Bada system officially announced "integration" in 2012, the three unified into a new name - Tizen, and by the Linux Foundation, Samsung, Intel, and a large number of operators around the world to participate in the development.
Tizen, who was not weak in technology, lost to time in the end
To be honest, whether from the underlying technical accumulation or the technical strength of the supporters behind it, Tizen's "start" is obviously not bad. However, it is not difficult to look back at history and find that the Tizen system has almost begun to lose partners from the second year of its birth (2013), and in the third year, this system that integrates the technology of major giants and has the "support" of the Linux Foundation behind it has actually declined.
In 2010, the iPhone 4 was officially released
Why is that? In fact, the reason is very simple, because in Maemo, Meego, LiMo, Bada, the "predecessors" of Tizen, and busy discussing mergers in 2007-2010, iOS and Android two major mobile operating systems have already completed the early product layout. And relying on rapid iteration of hardware and software, it has corrected some of the initial slots and conquered developers and users around the world.
By the time the Tizen system was "ready" in 2011, Samsung had already found that it was difficult to have a new mobile operating system on the market.
Tizen manages sensors and power consumption much better than Android, which makes it very powerful on smartwatches
It has to be said that Samsung is wise, because after recognizing this, they quickly turned Tizen's primary development direction to low-power smart wearable devices, IoT smart home appliances and other fields. Nine years later (2021), the fact that Google sought smartwatch technology cooperation from Samsung has also proved that Tizen's execution efficiency and in-depth development of functions in the field of low power consumption are actually far ahead of Android.
The last Tizen phone, released on the Samsung Z4 in 2017
But because of this, on the smartphone side, Samsung obviously did not pay much attention to Tizen. You know, they were all launched flagship products for LiMo and Bada systems, but in Tizen, the Samsung Z1 positioning of the first system was only barely a mid-range model, and the main sales area was also set in India. Its main goal is to be smoother than Android, and the device is cheaper.
As a result, with the continuous improvement of Android technology on the mobile phone side, coupled with the rapid iteration of the new SoC, the little fluency and cost-effective advantage of Tizen mobile phone will naturally be quickly equalized, or even surpassed. Coupled with the fact that Samsung itself has maintained the industry status of "the largest manufacturer of Android mobile phones", it is naturally unlikely to allocate much resources to Tizen. Eventually, with the integration of the Tizen smartwatch system into the latest version of Google Wear OS, the Tizen mobile phone version that has been "idle" for many years has come to an end.
Tizen fell, but its "friends and relatives" seemed harder to support
From a consumer perspective, the demise of Tizen's mobile phone system will have little impact. After all, its mounted machine has not sold much, plus the last Tizen mobile phone is already a product of 2017, and not many users are still using it.
Tizen is likely to continue to be around for a long time in Samsung's IoT appliances
But for the Linux Foundation, Tizen's "downfall" significance may be quite significant, after all, even if Tizen is no matter how bad, it is also the only "orthodox Linux mobile phone system" it supports. Compared to many other so-called "standalone" systems on the market, Tizen has its own clear, traceable technology system, and more importantly, its applications are completely incompatible with Android - from this point of view alone, it is indeed very "confident".
Many other Linux mobile projects can't even adapt to the newly launched phone in time
However, when we look at the existing mobile operating systems with the same high independence as Tizen, we will find that Tizen, which has just been "declared the end", may even be the most contentious one in this mobile Linux. After all, whether it's Mer(open source Meego)-based Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch-based Ubuntu, these other Linux phone systems are badly unsupported on the hardware side first.
In fact, they can often only adapt to some extremely backward hardware so far, which not only makes it impossible for related products to enter the mainstream market, but also makes these other "Linux mobile phone systems" themselves in the progress of technology research and development, and may even be in the basic technical ideas, which have been far out of touch with the needs of current mainstream consumers.
Not only that, friends who pay attention to our three easy lives may remember that as soon as a few years, Google's self-developed mobile operating system "Fuchsia", which is no longer based on Linux, may appear in the smartphone market in the form of Samsung's debut. At that time, the influence of the Linux camp on the smartphone market will undoubtedly be further weakened.
Of course, it is still that sentence, for consumers, as long as the new system and new mobile phone are powerful and easy to use, there is a high probability that it will not have any special ideas because it "does not belong to Linux". So the only people who are really panicked are the Linux Foundation, and some companies or individuals who are still insisting on developing new Linux mobile phone systems.
【The picture of this article comes from the network】