We’re still waiting for Samsung to release its first Tizen smartphone. It announced the Samsung Z back in June, but we’re still not sure when it will actually go on sale. The company planned to release it in Russia during the third quarter, with other markets to follow sometime after that, but now it looks like even the Russian release might be later than planned.
Still, it’s not all bad news as the phone did at least make it to the Tizen Developer Summit Russia 2014, where it was snapped in a previously unseen gold colour.
As you can see it looks every bit a Samsung phone, with a sharply rectangular design and a faux leather back cover, reminiscent of the one found on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and it looks exactly like the black version that was shown off when it was announced, only this time in a gold colour, complete with a gold ring around the home button.
As a reminder, the Samsung Z has a 4.8 inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display, a 2.3GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel main camera, a 2.1 megapixel front facing one, 16GB of built in storage and a microSD card slot with support for cards of up to 64GB.
So it’s a high end phone but not a top end one. Don’t mistake this for a Tizen alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S5, but it does inherit some of the Galaxy S5’s features, including Samsung’s S Health app, a fingerprint scanner, an Ultra Power Saving Mode and a download booster.
What’s really going to make or break it though is the fact that it runs Tizen. That’s bound to be a selling point for people who want an alternative to the established mobile operating systems, but can it really hope to sway many people from Android and iOS? We’ll find out, just as soon as it launches.
