At a special event in Delhi on Tuesday, Samsung launched the Tizen-powered Samsung Z2 smartphone, priced at Rs. 4,590. The smartphone will be available in Black, Wine Red, and Gold colour variants from Monday via Paytm and Samsung’s offline retail stores.
The South Korean consumer electronics giant claims that the Samsung Z2 has been built from scratch by its R&D team in Bengaluru. The smartphone is the first 4G LTE smartphone from Samsung that runs Tizen OS. It comes with support for LTE Cat.4 with downloads up to 150Mbps, and uploads up to 50Mbps. It also features VoLTE support and HD voice calling.
Notably, Samsung Z2 customers can avail the Jio Preview Offer, with a SIM that will provide access to Reliance Jio services like Jio Beats, Jio On Demand, and more, free for 90 days with unlimited data, calling, and more.
Coming back to the Tizen OS, the company has worked on some India-specific features. It bears support for 12 Indian regional languages, and, Samsung has also launched a My Money Transfer app alongside, which will come preloaded on the smartphone and enable users to transfer up to Rs. 5,000 without Internet service. No other details of the service were shared at this point.
Samsung says the latest version of Tizen OS enables users to unlock their phones using gesture unlock, and they can swipe upwards to switch between apps. Users can also pin up to apps that stay on the screen even as they scroll through their list of apps. Tizen OS also comes Smart Tutor app with a personal assistant and smart tutor will help first-time smartphone users come on board. It also has the Samsung Ultra Data Saving Mode that claims to save up to 40 percent data. The recently introduced S-bike mode is featured as well.
As for the specifications, the Samsung Z2 sport a 4-inch WVGA (480×800 pixels) display, and is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core processor coupled with 1GB of RAM. It sports a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, and a VGA (0.3-megapixel) front camera. It bears 8GB of inbuilt storage, expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).
The Samsung Z2 is powered by a 1500mAh battery, and Samsung says this can deliver up to 8 hour of 4G browsing. The smartphone also features OTG support.
The Z2, despite its name, is in fact the third smartphone in the Samsung Z series of Tizen smartphones. The first Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z1, was launched in India in January last year. In October, the company then launched the Samsung Z3.
According to Samsung, there are 550 million feature phone users in India right now, with an additional 10 million feature phones sold every month. Samsung is hoping the Z2 will entice these users to upgrade to their first smartphone.
Samsung claims that only 4 percent of sub-Rs. 5,000 devices sold in India today are 4G, compared to 80 percent of all smartphones. The Samsung Z2 aims to fill this gap. The company also claimed a 55 percent share of the Indian 4G smartphone market.