Samsung-founded organization shows Tizen 3.0 on a ZTE smartphone

Tizen, the organization that makes a mobile operating system on behalf of Samsung and Intel, will show a smartphone with the new version Tizen 3.0 at the telecom fair MWC. It is not a smartphone from Samsung, but a converted model from the Chinese manufacturer ZTE.

The phone that Tizen will be showing is a ZTE Geek, an Android smartphone that the Chinese manufacturer showed a year ago and that runs on an Intel Atom Z2580 soc. The reason that Tizen chooses this device is probably because it is one of the few smartphones with an Intel processor. Intel and Samsung are the initiators of the Linux-based mobile operating system Tizen. The Mobile World Congress telecom fair will take place in Barcelona in five weeks.

That the organization will use the ZTE Geek to show the unreleased Tizen 3.0, according to an irc log, in which an employee confirms this. Samsung is the big name behind Tizen, but despite this, no phone with the mobile operating system has been released yet. Several providers have had plans for the release of a device, but first Orange and recently the Japanese provider NTT Docomo have canceled the release.

Tizen originated from a merger of Nokia and Intel-made Meego and Samsung’s Bada. Samsung has reportedly already spent billions of euros on the development of Tizen and has already released a camera with Tizen in South Korea. It is unclear when the first smartphones with the operating system will appear.

Mockup: ZTE Geek with Tizen