Going into the Tizen Developer Conference there were a few major questions that people wanted answers to. The developers wanted to know details about the Tizen App Store, everyone wanted to know when we’d see the first Tizen devices, which would be the carriers supporting them, and what about the big games apps?

The keynote did manage to answer a few of those questions, albeit in not complete detail. Tizen devices are coming this year, but Jong-Deok Choi, EVP, Samsung won’t be more specific. In terms of operator support, Roy Sugimura from NTT DOCOMO has stated that they will be carrying the first Tizen device in the second half of this year. Frederic Dufal, Devices Technical Director for Orange has also announced that they are committed to launching a Tizen project this year (end of summer, Europe only).

• The big change from Tizen 1.0 to the current 2.1 release is the ability to run native apps. Samsung has folded Bada into the platform, although this was not specifically mentioned in the keynote.

• The Tizen Store has been announced, and is open for app developers to submit their apps. Users cannot access it yet.

• Tizen 2 also has an inbuilt security layer, McAfee has contributed to this. 

• A Tizen App Challenge has been announced. Submissions will be accepted June 1 onwards, and a total of 4$ Million is up for grabs. 

• Also big news for gaming enthusiasts, some of the top gaming engines like Unity, Havok, Game Salad are coming to Tizen. 

• NTT DOCOMO will make a Tizen device available in the second half of the year.

• So will Orange. They like Tizen because of its open nature, and HTML5 focus. The launch will be a part of the ‘back to school’ campaign that will start at the end of summer. Europe only for now.

• We also got a look at the in vehicle application of Tizen, Jaguar | Land Rover wants to push the boundaries of what people expect from a in-car Linux based system. A competition to generate ideas, UI elements and functionality is also under way. 

• Finally, the next major release of Tizen will be the big 3.0. Expect this release in 2014 devices. The roadmap for the release isn’t complete yet, and the development will be done openly on Tizen.org. They encourage platform developers and other open source developers to contribute. 

•  There is a tremendous amount of push to bring big name developers to Tizen. Facebook, Angry Birds were named in the keynote. I saw demoes of Gameloft’s Asphalt 7 and Real Golf running on a Tizen reference device, along with games based on the Unity engine, games from Sega, and Opera Mini.

We’ve seen Open Mobile’s implementation of brining Android apps to Tizen before, but that method involves deployment on a platform level. The Open Mobile code needs to be a part of the Tizen code before the Android apps can be run on Tizen. Infraware, the company behind the Polaris App Player has a different approach.

The way this works in that they have a solution called PAG (Polaris App Generator) that lets the developer upload an Android app (APK) and it converts it into a TPK file that can be installed on the Tizen device. Then to run this modified TPK, you need to have the PAP (Polaris App Player) installed on the phone. Once that’s present, the modified TPK that you just installed will launch inside the PAP, and behave like a native Tizen app.

The company is giving away the Polaris App Player to users for free, in the hope that developers will use their service to deploy their Android apps to Tizen, thus making them money. While I have my doubts about Android Apps ‘officially’ being supported on Tizen, Infraware has a chance of succeeding as they don’t need to be a part of the platform, and have a business model as long as the developers and users are on board. Here is a video of the implementation in action:

While there is a noticeable slow down while running high performance games, most apps should run fine. Although, there will always be the issue of not all UI elements working properly because the app was originally made for Android in mind. The current implementation is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, so that means none of the ICS and up only apps, will be available. According to the company, PAG can port 80~90% of Android apps to Tizen app without re-compiling. Some examples include games such as Angrybird series, Counter Terrorist, Treasure Detective, Fruit Slice, Drag Racing, Shut Bubble Deluxe, Cut the Rope Free, Air Hockey etc.

Back in the day Intel had Moblin (PC and tablet OS), and Nokia had Maemo. Both of which came together to form MeeGo, an effort which has since been abandoned. Instead we have Tizen, a OS targeted at not just mobile phones, but also in vehicle systems, tablets and the PCs. While we’ve seen it running on mobile phone hardware (ARM chips), there has so far been nothing on the PC front, that was until today.

At the Tizen Conference 2013, I got a look at Tizen running on Intel’s Ivy Bridge ultrabook. While the PC release of Tizen is still some time away, the following video should give you a good idea of what to expect in terms of the UI and functionality.

The free to download Tizen images for laptops will be made available through Tizen.org website. While the best platform to run that release would be Ivy Bridge and up, I’m told that work is being done to support older chips and netbooks (in a limited way) as well.

(YouTube link)

Thanks to Patrick from Intel for the demo.

Just when you thought MeeGo was a closed chapter, comes news that ex-Nokians who worked on the N9 and the MeeGo community are coming together to ‘continue Nokia’s excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones’. The new project is called ‘Jolla’, which apparently when translated from Finnish means a better rescue boat, an obvious yet cheeky reference to the infamous burning platform memo.

This is great news for those of you who thought the MeeGo was the way to go for Nokia, but before you get too excited remember that doesn’t meant that your N9 will magically start getting updates from Jolla. That being said, you never know what the community might be able to achieve.

Jolla is here. #MeeGo based smartphones will have a bright, new future. Stay tuned!

— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 7, 2012

Exciting times if you’re a MeeGo fan.

Last month I mentioned that a community based solution for bringing WhatsApp to the Nokia N9 was in the works, and today it is finally available for download. Its developer Tarek Galal had realsed a first look video of it running on the N9 a while ago, and now you can grab the .deb file and install it on your own device.

The application is still beta so there might be a few bugs here and there, but its a pretty great accomplishment for the community. Head over the Wazapp.IM and download the app.

The lack of a WhatsApp client was a huge blow to the N9, and I hope WhatsApp reaches across to the developer and helps him in his efforts, rather than try and kill the unofficial port.

[via: My Nokia Blog]

Users of the Nokia N9 have longed for a Whats App client for their device since a long time, but it finally looks as if their prayers are close to being answered. While Whats App isn’t doing an official version of the app, the community has come up with a solution of its own called Wazapp.

Wazapp is a community port of the hugely popular IM application, and its developer Tarek Galal has realsed a first look video of it running on the N9. The video is proof that the project is progressing nicely, and shows messages being sent and received between the N9 running Wazapp, and a Samsung Android device running the official WhatsApp application.

When is it coming out you wonder? The developer has this to say:

If you cannot wait, a dedicated website for the project has been setup at wazapp.im and you can keep checking in, otherwise rest assured that I’ll let you know once its out. I hope that the makers of Whats App support this development, and not try and kill its functionality with an update to their official clients.

[via: My Nokia Blog]

The world hasn’t heard much about Tizen since September, when it was first announced. To refresh your memory, Tizen is the brand new HTML5 centered OS that is backed by Intel and Samsung, a partnership which was forged after Nokia and Intel’s ambitious MeeGo project was stopped in its tracks in February 2011.

When the announcement was first made, an initial release was supposed to come out in Q1 2012, with retail Tizen devices only later in the year. While that hasn’t happened yet, there are promising signs. A visit to HTML5test.com shows that Tizen 1 is well into internal testing and its HTML5 test results are off the charts. It scored a very impressive 408 points, with 15 bonus points. That’s better than Chrome for Mac that manages 400 points with 13 bonus points. A few weeks ago, Tizen was at about 363 points with 15 bonus points. So the development seems to be progressing nicely and the upcoming Tizen Developer Conference scheduled for May 7-9 in San Francisco should be a perfect venue to show it off.

The first annual Tizen Conference engages and educates developers on Tizen technology and HTML5 app development for Tizen devices. This conference is for Tizen developers, app developers, platform designers, operators, OEMs, hardware vendors, software vendors, open source enthusiasts, and anyone engaged in Tizen. The Tizen conference will be hosted at the downtown Hyatt in San Francisco, CA on May 7-9th, 2012.

The Linux Foundation isn’t giving away much about what will be shown off, if anything. The agenda has now been posted, and all we can tell is that the keynote sessions are scheduled for 9 am onwards on May 8th. No info yet on who will be present and if Samsung will finally show off their Tizen device. An important thing to note is that a lot of the sessions mentioned in the agenda will be hosted by Intel and Samsung employees, so the companies will definitely be there in full force. There has been talk of Samsung merging its Bada OS with Tizen, but there has been a bit of back and forth on that as well. The upcoming Tizen Conference should serve as a good opportunity for all involved to clear the air about all these questions, and finally get to what its about – great software on shiny hardware. Registrations are now open, and free.

The PR 1.2 firmware update has just been rolled out to the developer only N950 MeeGo Harmattan device, and it comes to us in the form of  beta version number 3.2012.02-6_PR_RM680. This update is a precursor to the N9 update, and will give you a fair idea of what new features to expect on your N9.

Highlights include support for five new languages, face recognition, enhanced copy-paste, software update notifications for applications and games in Nokia Store and folders in the application view. If you own a N950, you can find all the details and download links here.

Here is a slightly more detailed changelog, if you have a time, a complete list of the bugs that have been fixed has also been published.

• New languages
  • Persian
  • Hebrew
  • Kazakh
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
• Software update notifications for content in Nokia Store
• Face recognition for gallery and face tags for Facebook
• Support for folders in the application view
• Mail for Exchange global address book lookup
• Mail thread support in the Email client
• Extended copy-paste support
• Media sharing with DLNA compatible devices
• Improved browser history view
• Compass support in Maps
• QtWebKit update to version 2.2
• New font taken into use
• Front camera support
• Video editing support in the Gallery application
• MeeGotouch Framework
• Visual hint for differentiating swipe close gesture from normal swipes
• Timestamps shown in notifications
• Notifications sorted by timestamps
• Improvements in Event Feed area
• Music controls in Lock screen
• New feedbacks added to MeeGoTouch theme.
• Kernel updated to be in sync with the upstream kernel version 2.6.32.48

• Connectivity

• Android NDEF Push Protocol disabled
• NFC polling enabled in lock screen
• Separate switch for controlling mobile background connections while roaming

• Camera

• Self Timer support
• Composition grid + on/off control

• Calendar

• Better handling of To-Do lists, recurring events and timezones
• Private flag support for events
• Support for read-only events
• Ability to forward/reply/reply-all for received events

• Clock

• Clock alarm becomes silent by flipping the device face down instead of snoozing
• Updated time picker

• Gallery

• People view added to the grid toolbar
• Improved multiple selection indication in grid view

• Music Player

• Audiobook and podcast support
• Ability to create playlists
• Ability to delete music files from music player library views via object menu
• Possibility to see songs that are on the current play queue

[via: My Nokia Blog]

The MeeGo Harmattan running Nokia N9 may be the last of its kind, but there seems to be no death of quality apps that are coming out for the device. It already has apps for Facebook, Twitter and a few games like Angry Birds and Need For Speed built in, but there are a few key apps which are missing.

Swype is something I absolutely love, so I was pretty disappointed when it didn’t ship with the N9, specially when we’d seen early demos of it working on the N9. But better late than never, the PR 1.1 firmware started rolling out for the N9 today and with it Swype makes a debut on the N9, and its worth the wait.

It isn’t activated out of the box, so you need to goto Settings> Time and Language> Text Input and enable it first. Then you can swipe away the default N9 keyboard and switch to swype (all of this is demoed in the video below).

As you can see, the keys are nicely spaced out furthering Swype’s goal to be both a ‘Swype’ keyboard and a good thumb type board at the same it. There’s inbuilt auto correction, word prediction and a bunch of other options. We go through everything in the video below.

(Available in HD)