Forget the Z2, Samsung may have readied a Tizen-powered flagship called the Z9

A leaked import listing points to Samsung sending across test units of an SM Z930F smartphone. The device seems to be priced at approximately Rs 30,000 and 2 units of the same have just been off loaded in India. Going just by the name, it is enough to generate speculation that the Z9 will be much better than the Z2 that is expected to be announced in India on 23 August.  At times it may appear that Samsung isn’t exactly going anywhere with Tizen. However, look closer and you will notice how the OS has made its way into the company’s wearables and also on the Tizen Z1 and Tizen Z3 smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy Z2 is expected to be an entry-level smartphone offering, with a 4-inch AMOLED display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage under the hood. With that said, the Z9 could be something a lot bigger and more powerful compared to the current offerings that are powered by Tizen. As of today, there is obviously no room for another smartphone OS unless of course it comes with its own set of apps. It will share the same fate as Microsoft’s Windows Phone while BlackBerry finally decided to jump ship with Android and save itself. With little or no apps, especially from big developers, even a smartphone with the best hardware on the market would be a hard sell. Moreover, with the price tags of Android-powered smartphones dropping by the day (we even have one that costs Rs 251 ), it would make little sense for buyers to switch over from a feature phone to a Tizen-powered device. This is just for the entry-level segment, flagships are another matter entirely. Unless of course Samsung has a plan and it finally thinks that its Tizen OS offers something a lot better than what Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS currently have on offer. More importantly, the Z9 flagship could be the beginning of something different. Something similar happened with Samsung almost a year ago when it suddenly decided to move away from Android Wear to Tizen. While Samsung had more than its fair share of reasons to do the same (hardware restrictions often result in similar performance) Android Wear was getting a bit stagnated and Apple’s success with its Watch was making things obvious back in 2015. Could Samsung be looking to add a Tizen lineup of powerful Galaxy S7 like devices? For now it is hard to tell, but things do seem to be hinting at that.