Whether you like it or not, and no matter what some “media personalities” might think, Tizen is under active development by Samsung and Intel, which resulted in version 2.2 of the Tizen SDK being released over a week ago. Now, some of the changes 2.2 brings in terms of the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) have been detailed.
The changes start with the status bar: while earlier the indicators for battery, signal etc were centered and moved to the left or right as a new indicator became active, now the battery and signal icons are placed at each corner of the screen, with other indicators showing up in the middle and expanding as required. A proper battery icon has also been added, to the left of the time.
The biggest change is the inclusion of support for hardware back and menu buttons, which means the two buttons won't up as part of the UI inside apps. That can be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you like software or hardware buttons, though since they weren't like Android's software buttons in the first place, it shouldn't be an issue (not to mention the in-app buttons looked hideous previously).
Other changes include improvements to the icons, such as the on/off switch seen in front of toggles in the settings menu to make it more visible, and the black theme supposedly now looks better than ever (that's a nice thing Tizen will offer: ability to change the theme by default, similar to Windows Phone.
There should be other changes as well, but they're probably focused more on developers. Last we heard the first Tizen smartphone has been delayed, and the 2.2 update doesn't really tell us how close the OS is to completion, but hopefully we'll hear more from the horse's (either Samsung or Intel) mouth soon.
Anyone looking forward to Tizen?
