Tizen Developer Conference Recap: New devices, profiles, developer tools and Internet of Things roadmap

Today marked the closing of the third-annual TDC event in San Francisco. The event saw a record number of developers and media attendees witness the official unveiling of the world’s first Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z, set to launch in Q3 of 2014 in Russia. A number of other new device prototypes, software, device profiles and developer tools were also on display at the event. Highlights included:

• Keynote from Tizen Technical Steering Group unveiling the Samsung Z smartphone—Imad Sousou of Intel and JD Choi of Samsung, co-chairs of Tizen Technical Steering Group, kicked off the conference with the unveiling of the Samsung Z smartphone, which was demonstrated for the first time ever during the keynote and shortly thereafter in the TDC 2014 Tech Showcase.

• Tizen In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) 3.0—Tizen IVI 3.0 was displayed in a pair of automotive demonstrations featuring a Chevrolet Corvette and a Land Rover SUV. Leading up to TDC, Intel Corporation announced its Intel® In-Vehicle Solutions module, which is optimized to run Tizen IVI and is being used in development with several additional automotive manufactures.

Tizen 2.3 Alpha source code is available, now including support for the wearable profile. Developers and manufactures may utilize Tizen to their wearable devices based on this source code.

Highlights of this release include, among other improvements:

• Performance improvement and more lightweight webkit as well as webkit version update
• BT LE functions for wearable device connectivity such as privacy and peripheral role

The source code for this release is available in Tizen's Git repositories (under the tizen_2.3 branch) and as for OBS project please refer to Tizen:2.3:Wearable project.

In addition, Tizen 2.3 Alpha SDK for wearable application developers will be released soon at Tizen.org.