Samsung Z, the first Tizen smartphone delayed once again

Samsung had promised a while back that we’ll be seeing a smartphone running on their Tizen operating system sometime during this summer. Sure enough, the company announced the Samsung Z at the beginning of June with a launch event scheduled for July 10th. The event was meant to take place yesterday during the Tizen developers summit held in Moscow, Russia. It seems that something didn’t go quite as planned and Samsung had to delay the release. We need to note that the company’s Tizen project has already suffered quite a number of other delays in the past.

The Wall Street Journal reports that this announcement was said to include a release date and market-ready products. Samsung said in a statement that  “the smartphone will appear on the Russian market later, when we can offer our users a fullest portfolio of applications.” This is very unfortunate as the Samsung Z was supposed to offer an alternative to those who are looking for something different than the iOS or Android operating systems. The company did mention earlier this year that the upcoming smartphone will be released sometime during the third quarter of 2014 so there is still time to make it happen. However, all these delays do not bode well for them and both potential customers and developers are most likely getting annoyed by the whole situation by now. As for what you can expect to see on the device besides the Tizen OS, the Samsung Z’s spec list can be found below.

• 4.9 inch screen
• 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display
• 2.3 GHz quad-core processor
• 2 GB of RAM
• 16 GB of internal memory
• Micro SD card slot, up to 64 GB
• 8MP rear camera
• 2.1 MP front facing camera
• Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, heart rate
• 2600 mAh battery
• Tizen 2.2.1

The device certainly comes with decent specs, but it’s well below some of the more popular smartphones out there which means that Samsung Z’s strongest selling point remains the Tizen operating system. That may end up working well and even some app developers already see some great business opportunities here. “You may be a big fish in a little pond now,” MedM chief operating officer Denis Khitrov said.” But think of the potential Samsung can give you in a new store and the profit you could be making, while in the iOS and Android stores, your app would be drowning. If this train starts moving, there may be no stopping it.”