The Tizen 2.0 source code and SDK are now available for download here. The latest version of the SDK brings improvements over the previous alpha released in September of 2012 and supports additional mobile devices as well. As a mobile developer Tizen is shaping up to be a very viable option for development and is worth checking out.
What is Tizen?
Tizen is an open source, standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and silicon suppliers for multiple device categories, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, and more. Tizen offers an innovative operating system, applications, and a user experience that consumers can take from device to device.
The Tizen project resides within the Linux Foundation and is governed by a Technical Steering Group. The Technical Steering Group is the primary decision-making body for the open source project, with a focus on platform development and delivery, along with the formation of working groups to support device verticals.
The Tizen Association has been formed to guide the industry role of Tizen, including gathering of requirements, identification and facilitation of service models, and overall industry marketing and education.
Tizen provides a robust and flexible environment for application developers, based on HTML5. With HTML5's robust capabilities and cross platform flexibility, it is rapidly becoming the preferred development environment for mobile apps and services. The Tizen SDK and API allow developers to use HTML5 and related web technologies to write applications that run across multiple device segments.
Some of the features in the new 2.0 SDK
- Strong support for HTML5/W3C via an enhanced Web framework
- Web UI framework that includes full-screen and multi-window support
- Access to more of the device like NFC support, Bluetooth, and messaging
- A native framework that allows fully featured application that will provide running in the background, TTS (Text-To-Speech), and IP Push
- A native IDE that includes a WYSIWYG environment, test tools, analyzer, and a project wizard to help make development easier
- A Web IDE version like the above to aid in the HTML side of things like a Javascript inspector, and log viewer
With this latest iteration of their SDK they are bringing yet another platform to the table to mobile developers to pick from when developing apps.