Samsung Enters Smartphone Wars With Bada OS 175
MojoKid writes "Samsung is betting there's room for more in the smartphone market and has unveiled its new bada OS. The name 'bada,' means 'ocean' in Korean and was chosen to convey the 'limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform.' Samsung claims the OS is extremely simple for developers, saying that bada was built to be extremely interactive with its users — including flash control, motion sensing, fine-tuned vibration control and face detection. Samsung is hoping developers will take this user interface and create a variety of applications focused around it, and thus provide different types of apps than exist for the iPhone and Android OS. The bada OS has a variety of sensors, including accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity and activity. Samsung will be hosting a series of Developer Days in Seoul, London and San Francisco, among other cities, throughout 2010."
Re:Oh goody! (Score:4, Informative)
To go with their new, incompatible OS, maybe they can introduce yet another new, incompatible power plug and a new, incompatible headphone jack!
Oh, yeah. I had a Blackjack and I had all the things I would need. Car adapter, headphone adapter, extended battery. I get the Blackjack II, it has all new adapters. So I have to buy a new headphone adapter, car adapter, and they don't include an extended battery with it in the box! In fact, they don't even have one!
Fuck Samsung's phones. They make great TVs, though.
Not an OS per se... (Score:5, Informative)
...as it doesn't specify a single kernel. [source] [linuxfordevices.com] It's more of a unified platform for development on Samsung phones.
It also probably uses EFL, as Samsung was recently shown to sponsor the development of Enlightenment and its supporting libraries [source] [phoronix.com]
With Nokia moving to a unified development environment across most of their devices, it's really not a surprising move for the #2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
"Enters"? New OS, but not new to smartphones (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed - Samsung are the 2nd largest phone company in terms of market share (second only to Nokia), and they have plenty of "smart"phones (especially if you use a definition broad enough to include the Iphone - that would include most phones).
Of course, perhaps to Slashdot and the media they've "entered", because they seem to have some distorted idea that the mobile phone market consists of Apple in the lead, with the only competition being from Blackberry and Android. The reality is nothing of the sort. (E.g., this random page [cellular-news.com] I found gives Nokia at 35%, Samsung 2nd at 31%, basically a whole load of companies who virtually never get Slashdot coverage - and Apple, who get Daily Iphone Slashvertisements, at 4% - and that's one of the higher estimates I've seen for Apple.)
Presumably what the article meant to say is that they've entered the smartphone OS wars, in that I believe that previously they'd used off the shelf OSs like Windows Mobile and Android? Comparing to the Iphone or the Droid doesn't make sense, since this is a new OS, it should be compared to OSs such as Symbian and Android (and if they were going to compare to products rather than OS, please, at least pick some of the major sellers rather than ones with small market share).
Re:OS wars are over (Score:4, Informative)
It's not truly an OS. It can run either on a Linux-based kernel or another, and which they choose depends on the hardware configuration for some reason. It's more of a series of layers on top of an OS.
Samsung sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I wish I'd known about this a few months ago.
I bought an Android-based Samsung Galaxy which is great hardware-wise (standard connectors, 8GB flash built-in and still the best-looking Android phone out there, in my opinion), but looks to be basically abandoned software-wise.
Just this week Samsung pushed another small update for the same Android 1.5 which came with the system at a time when Android 2.1 devices are already available from other vendors. There have been rumours that Samsung has no intentions of upgrading the system software to even 1.6, and they're not communicating anything to the community.
This sucks since more and more apps are coming out requiring at least 1.6, such as the google maps navigation and google goggles.
Hell, at least they could allow changes to the baseband so that the community could build their own system. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of having an open-source OS when you can't use the radio because it's locked down [twitter.com].
In fact, unlike other Android phones, you need Samsung's crappy, bloated, windows-only software just to upgrade the system's firmware. The other get automatic over-the-air updates.
My advice to anyone considering an Android phone is to go with HTC (they're still supporting the G1) or Motorola (they have their future riding on Android). Samsung isn't getting my money again.
Re:"Enters"? New OS, but not new to smartphones (Score:3, Informative)
Here's [gartner.com] a recent report of overall and smartphone market share. Samsung barely makes the smartphone report, hence it's not that much of a stretch to say they are new to smartphones.
Re:It's Linux (Score:1, Informative)
You are clearly unfamiliar with the Unix(tm) OS wars of the 80s and 90s. Spoiler: it didn't improve market share.
Re:BadOS? (Score:3, Informative)
BadOS? Was Windows Mobile rebranded?
Bada is a GNU/Linux, running E17. Anyone used to program with EFL already heard the news a while ago, and will be able to recognize familiar Elementary elements in some of the screenshots.