Samsung to replace its Bada platform with Tizen

Samsung has announced its plans to replace its homegrown smartphone platform - Bada - with the Linux-based Tizen, which was recently created in collaboration with Intel.

Launched back in 2010, Bada was meant to feature on Samsung's low-end touchscreen phones. Compared to the feature phone OS found on these phones, Bada was much better because it had an improved user interface and smartphone features such as proper multitasking and native third party application installation through Samsung's own application store.

Now, however, with Samsung starting work on Tizen, it makes little sense to keep both the platforms existing simultaneously. Then there is also the fact that Samsung has Android and Windows Phone devices as well.

So starting this year, Bada will be replaced with Tizen and as such, will cease to exist on its own, outside of the devices that are currently running it. Samsung has said that the current Bada applications and the SDK will be backward compatible with the new OS. No mention of whether the current devices will be upgraded to Tizen, although we wouldn't hold our breath for that.

Samsung has also mentioned that they will be launching one or two Tizen phones this year. Our guess is that they will be low-end or mid-range devices, since Samsung has already got the high-end covered with Android and Windows Phone devices. Hopefully we will find out more at MWC this year.

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