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The Egg, a handheld Tizen webserver, emerges at IDF

Eggcyte is demoing its redesigned, handheld “The Egg” personal server device, which runs Tizen Linux on a quad-core Atom, and offers up to 256GB of storage.

On Oct. 29, 2014, Eggcyte cancelled its Kickstarter project for its somewhat ovoid shaped personal server device, dubbed The Egg. The project had only nipped at the edges of its half million dollar funding goal. When we contacted the company for our Dec. 31 checkup on the fate of crowdfunded gizmos in 2014, the company told us it was planning to re-launch a campaign in mid-January.

The Egg

Today at the Intel Developers Forum 2015, Eggcyte is finally unveiling the latest version of The Egg, which still features a 2.4-inch touchscreen, and is demonstrating a working, pre-production unit.

There’s a redesigned mainboard, which continues to use an Intel Atom processor, but it’s now a quad-core Bay Trail model, as explained in this July 23 Eggcyte blog post. The device still runs Tizen Linux, according to the spec sheet on the Eggcyte website, but the company no longer trumpets that fact.

The Egg’s redesigned PCB with quad-core Atom
The Egg’s redesigned PCB with quad-core Atom



Otherwise, the new private cloud server device looks to be almost identical to the original model, which had been intended to ship this July. That includes the price, which is the same as the original Kickstarter packages: $199 with 64GB of eMMC flash, $299 with 128GB, or $399 with 256GB. You can now apply a pre-order down payment of $10 to get $50 off these prices before shipment in October.

As before, The Egg is touted as a personal, self-configuring web server that lets you share password-protected personal videos, photos, music, and other files over the Internet without using social media or cloud based services. With this completely closed loop system, there’s no potential snooping or harvesting of personal information, says Eggcyte.

The Egg screen displays
The Egg screen displays


The Egg includes a WiFi hotspot and a 10-12 hour battery for streaming content even when not connected to the Internet. You can configure the device to exchange encrypted media with a select set of friends and family. Android, iOS, and web apps are available to control it.

You can also use The Egg as a backup drive for mobile devices and cameras. The device automatically imports photos, videos and other content from any device hooked up to its micro-USB port including iPhones, Android phones, and SLR and GoPro cameras, says Eggcyte. Apps can be designed using HTML, Javascript, PHP, SQLite, and similar programs.

The Egg has a 2.4-inch, 320 x 240-pixel touchscreen, as well as a speaker, vibrating haptics, and sensors. Its curvy, ovoidal design predated the somewhat similar looking Firefox OS -based Runcible phone. The Egg is available in dark stone, egg shell, robin blue solid, and robin speckle coloring.
Specifications listed for The Egg include:

Processor — quad-core, Bay Trail Intel Atom
Memory /storage — 1GB RAM; 64/128/256GB eMMC flash
Wireless — WiFi a/b/g/n with hotspot; Bluetooth 4.0
Display — 2.4-inch, 320 x 240 multitouch capacitive; 262K colors
Other I/O — Micro-USB 2.0 type-AB with charging
Other features – Speaker; vibra motor (haptics + silent ringtones); accelerometer, compass, ambient light
Power — 4.35V; 910mAh Li-Ion battery (10 to 12 hours)
Operating system — Tizen Linux with Nginx web server, SQLite, Webkit, HTML5, Javascript, JQuery, PHP
“The Egg gives you control of your own content, and it fits right in the palm of your hand,” stated Barry Solomon, Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We’re excited to be to part of Intel’s big show to help introduce The Egg to the world.”


Further information

Pre-order reservations for The Egg are available for $10, which gives you $50 off the retail prices that will kick in when the device ships in October: $199 with 64GB of eMMC flash, $299 with 128GB, or $399 with 256GB. (It’s unclear whether the $10 is refundable.) The Egg will be demonstrated at the Ultimate MakerSpace at IDF 2015 in San Francisco’s Moscone West Convention Center through Aug. 20. More information may be found at the Eggcyte website.

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Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 News: Round Form Factor and Minimalist Design Teased

Samsung is making another set of big announcements this coming month of September, and one of them will be its upcoming Gear 2 smartwatch. Even if the unveiling is a month away, photos of the new wearable device have already been released by Samsung.

In a Samsung Mobile Press Lookbook, photos of the new smartwatch were shown, with the watch being worn by several fashion models. The lookbook also featured photos of recently released phablets, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus.

Samsung Galaxy Gear Fit held in comparison to the latest Samsung Galaxy Gear 2
Samsung Galaxy Gear Fit held in comparison to the latest Samsung Galaxy Gear 2


In the lookbook, the watch was seen on two models. In both photos, it appears that Samsung has ditched the square form factor it earlier had on its smartwatch and has gone for the round form factor. The device also sported a minimalist design, as the report described, with a black face and a silver metal band. Size-wise, the watch also appeared to be just the right size and not too oversized.

The next-generation smartwatch will also be running on Samsung's Tizen operating system, rather than Android Wear. According to the report, the Gear 2 software and apps will be "far cleaner" and have a "more minimalist interface." It will be able to monitor the user's heart rate, show calendar and messages notifications and will of course host a variety of useful apps including Nike+.

The Gear 2 will also be Wi-Fi enabled and will have a SIM card slot. It is not yet known if the watch will also be able to support Samsung Pay.

It is said to retail for around $300. Hardware details, color and style variants are not yet known, but Samsung will be unveiling these details on Sept. 3 at the IFA event in Berlin.

This is considered to be the predecessor of Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch that was first released in 2013. While the first set of smartwatches ran on Android Wear, Samsung eventually switched to Tizen.

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Samsung bets big time on Tizen OS

Tizen, the Samsung-backed open source operating system for everything from feature phones to smart wearables and televisions, will get a boost with over a thousand developers working on creating new uses for the platform. At the Tizen Developer Summit held in Bengaluru, a two-day conference aimed at educating, engaging and exciting existing and potential developers, the company announced that developers will be given a reference design smartphone for developing and testing their apps.

“TDS 2015 Bengaluru is significant as nearly half of the apps in the Tizen Store are created by developers from India.

Samsung bets big time on Tizen OS


This reflects the enormous opportunity in India where a large base of platform and app developers continues to show significant interest to develop Tizen OS and high-quality apps,” said Aloknath De, chief technology officer and VP-Samsung R&D Institute. Samsung calls Tizen the “OS of Everything”, meaning an OS that every Samsung devices will run in the future. The theme of the conference was how Samsung will empower various devices to connect with another using Tizen. Samsung executives even described how Tizen could be used to make smart cameras.

At Tizen Developer Summit, Samsung announced two new SDKs—version 2.3.1 and 2.4 Beta. With SDK 2.3.1 for wearables, developers will be able to write native apps apart from the existing web-apps. The new SDK will also bring support for smartwatches with circular display. The interesting announcement at TDS 2015 was not the support for circular display but how the circular bezel of the smartwatch will be used for navigation. This is very well related to the crown interface used in Apple Watch.

With SDK 2.4 Beta for wearables, smartphones and TVs, Samsung will bring graphics driven rich user interface and Cloudbox that will help users get content from various cloud based systems. Considering that none of the leading cloud services exist on Tizen, Cloudbox will make access to cloud services easier. This SDK also supports a new 3D engine named DALi (Dynamic Animation Library) that will help developers bring full 3D applications to the platform. Also there is support for contextual triggering that will customise Tizen functions according to user behaviour.

Samsung also announced that it has sold over one million units of Z1 since its launch. The consensus is that Samsung is trying to penetrate the feature phone segment with Tizen and it is totally unclear if and when Samsung will make a Tizen flagship. During his keynote De said, “27% of Tizen developers are from India while the global developer percentage is just 1% for India. He emphasised how 100% revenue to developers in the first-year makes the platform extremely lucrative for young Indian developers.” He added that “27 out of the top rank apps are games in the Tizen store and now Unity is bringing its 3D gaming engine to Tizen.”

The new SDKs will bring support for HTML, Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets which will enable development of intuitive UIs for the platform. Samsung also announced its plan to invest $100 million to create an open system for Internet of Things (IoT) based on Tizen platform. Samsung will bring a connected platform based on Tizen to all its household appliances and aims to get all Samsung consumer appliances connected by 2020.

While De didn’t share exact numbers on its app platform, he added that there has been 84% growth in the app development and developers can bring Android apps to Tizen using Android Compatibility library. With Samsung’s revenues dipping from flagships and growing conflict of interest with Google, Samsung seems to be slowly developing an alternative OS for the prime-time.

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Samsung Z1: Tizen, slowly chipping away at the Android market

Samsung Z1 Tizen is not a smartphone, everyone is familiar with. In fact Tizen isn’t an OS everyone is familiar with. You see in a market that is blanketed by Android and iOS users, it is difficult for any other operating system to make significant, ask Amazon, Blackberry and Windows. That is unless, they are backed by the world’s foremost handset maker. Here’s where one of the latest entrants into the OS game has a little bit of an edge.



Tizen is a Linux based operating system that has been appropriated and developed by Samsung. Samsung’s first foray into this operating system, which it hopes can chip away at the hegemony of Android, is the Samsung Z1. This particular handset released in early 2015 wasn’t supposed to turn the market on its head. It was however, supposed to be Samsung’s test marketing to prove to itself that an Android alternative, had a market.

Here’s proof that the market is pretty ripe for an Android alternative. Despite being a rather low range, entry level phone, the hyper competitive mobile market, seems to have taken rather well to the Tizen OS, with 1 million units of the Samsung Z1 having sold since its launch. Samsung can consider this proper validation of the presence of a market and a green signal to churn out newer, more powerful models featuring the OS.

Tizen: What’s all the fuss about?

The relative success of the Samsung Z1 has brought much needed attention on the heart of the machine, the Tizen OS. While the OS itself is still in its nascency, the company seemingly has big plans for it. Like all other major OS players, Android, Apple and Windows however, the acceptance of Tizen will depend on the developers willing to make applications for the Tizen OS and the eventual development of a robust marketplace for said apps. This in essence is the true test of the success of a mobile OS.

What better way to attract developers then, than a developers meet. With the Google I/O, Windows Developers Conference and the ‘Woodstock’ of the developer world, the Apple Developers Meet, well out of the way, Samsung has decided to hold a developer meet of its own. And one each in the world’s two largest smartphone markets in the world, China and India. The India chapter of the Samsung Tizen Developers Meet is scheduled for some time in August, at Bangalore. The Chinese city of Shenzhen will play host to the same event in September. Samsung seems to have big plans for the Tizen OS, as it has recently launched a new range of smart TVs with the OS at its heart as well.

Whether or not the Tizen Developers Meet proves to be a success, the fact of the matter is, that Samsung Z1 is one of the first (and we hope not the only) Android alternative out there. Here’s to more such attempts in the future.

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Samsung Gear Roundup: New Smartwatch to Run On Latest Tizen OS, Have Rotating Bezel

Samsung is reportedly planning to launch soon its next smartwatch with a round-dial, dubbed Gear A, according to details that are emerging ahead of its release.

The upcoming wearable will be Samsung's first attempt at industry lauded round-dial design and the latest report suggests the smartwatch to be powered by the latest Tizen OS and a rotating bezel.

Samsung Gear Roundup: New Smartwatch to Run On Latest Tizen OS, Have Rotating Bezel
Samsung Gear A Roundup: New Smartwatch To Run On Newest Tizen OS And Have A Rotating Beze lIBTimes India


During Samsung's Tizen Developer Summit hosted in Bangalore on 30 June, the Korean tech company revealed that its next smartwatch will be powered by Tizen 2.3.1 instead of Android Wear.

In addition, the company confirmed a rotating bezel ring UI for the Gear A smartwatch and a round 360x360 pixel touch screen display, Android Authority reported.

The unconfirmed Gear A smartwatch by Samsung has been in the news for several months now.

The news of Samsung's Gear A smartwatch, codenamed Orbis, featuring a rotating bezel, emerged in May. The report also hinted at a metal frame and a metal crown, which can help users to navigate through the smartwatch's menu.


So far, leaked specs of the Gear A smartwatch suggest an Exynos 3472 dual-core processor backed by 768MB RAM and 4GB internal storage. The smartwatch will include all major sensors found in high-end smartwatches launched till now.

The Samsung Gear A will pack barometer, heart rate sensors, gyro, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The smartwatch will be powered by a 250mAh battery and compete with the likes of Moto 360 and LG G Watch R.

There have been conflicting reports about the smartwatch's release schedule, but Samsung is widely expected to launch the Gear A at its upcoming Unpacked event on 13 August. At the event, Samsung will also unveil its much-awaited Galaxy Note 5 alongside Galaxy S6 Edge Plus.

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Samsung getting ready to present Tizen in a new avatar in 2016

Tizen, a Samsung backed operating system that was first released three years ago, may come in a newer avatar in 2016. People associated in the development of the OS also hinted something "big" is going to happen the next year.

Samsung getting ready to present Tizen in a new avatar in 2016
Samsung wants Tizen to be the 'OS of Everything' - mobiles, TVs, cameras, home appliances and wearables - so that all the devices are interconnected and can be managed from anywhere.


"Tizen OS is an operating system of everything (Tizen smartphones, Tizen wearables, Tizen TVs, refrigerators, cars etc) and it is getting fine-tuned to make an impact. It will take some time but will make an impact,"Aloknath De, chief technology officer and vice president, Samsung R&D Institute, told The Mobile Indian at the recently concluded Tizen Developer Summit in Bengaluru. However, he didn't reveal any timeline for the same.

What is Tizen?

Based on Linux, the Tizen has the backing of many organisations, especially Samsung and Intel, who want to create an alternate open operating system like the Android.

The initial build of Tizen was released in January 2012 but after that very few devices came with the OS.

In June 2014, Samsung introduced the first Tizen mobile platform based smartphone - Samsung Z in Russia. It has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and runs on Tizen 2.2.1 operating system. Earlier this year, Samsung had announced its second and India's first Tizen OS based smartphone, the Tizen Z1 for Rs 5,700. It has a 4 inch touchscreen with 480x800 pixels resolution, 1.2 GHz dual core processor,4 GB of internal memory, 768 MB RAM, and an expandable storage slot that can accommodate a micro SD card of up to 64 GB. The company claims it sold more than one million units of Z2 in India. Also, Samsung Gear wearables are based on Tizen platform.
What is Samsung upto?

Samsung calls Tizen the "OS of Everything". Clearly, it wants to bring all kinds of devices - mobiles, TVs, cameras, home appliances and wearables – on Tizen so that all the devices are interconnected and can be managed from anywhere.
At Tizen Developer Summit, Samsung announced two new SDKs (software development kit) - version 2.3.1 and 2.4 Beta. SDK is typically a set of software development tools that allows the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar development platform.

Tizen 2.3.1 SDK is for developing native apps for Wearables device, while Tizen 2.4 Beta is meant for Dynamic Animation Library (DALi) for creating 3D applications(this is the same technology that has been used in Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge), better optimization of hardware usage and power consumption, Couldbox Feature - inter- connectivity with multiple cloud platforms, and Contextual triggers similar to Google Now.

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