Samsung drops bada for Tizen

Samsung has announced it is to drop its own-brand operating system, bada, and replace it with a new OS developed with Intel.

Samsung uses bada in its budget smartphones. We’ve been impressed by it, especially when it was installed on a quality handset such as the Best Buy Samsung Wave 2.

Bada offers a decent range of features and is easy to use but crucially it doesn’t have anywhere near the selection of apps found on Android or iOS and consequently it hasn’t proved that popular.

Somewhat surprisingly Samsung has decided to replace Bada with another own-brand OS rather than simply adopting Android across the board.

Tizen is a Linux-based operating system and it shares some elements with Nokia’s aborted MeeGo OS as seen on the N9.

Like Android, Tizen in an open source operating system. This means that anyone can develop apps to run on the software – although Samsung may decide to only offer apps that it has pre-approved (in the same way that Apple screens apps on the App Store). At least the news that Bada apps will be compatible with Tizen means that its app store won’t have to start from scratch.

Samsung has said that it will launch one or two Tizen phones this year – hopefully we’ll be able to get our hands on them at Mobile World Congress in February.