Samsung has been developing the Tizen system for a long time. At the same time, Samsung has also made efforts to build its own ecosystem based on Tizen, including smart watches and smart TVs. The Z1, a Tizen mobile phone, has finally been officially released after numerous ticket jumps. The $90 selling price also determines that Z1 is a low-end mobile phone.
Specifications:
120.4 x 63.2 x 9.7mm, 112g, black/white/red body;
Tizen OS operating system;
Dual core 1.2GHz CPU, 750MB RAM, 4GB built-in storage, supporting maximum 64GB SD card expansion memory;
4-inch WVGA (480 × 800) 16 million color display;
3.1 megapixel rear camera (does not support autofocus), 300000 pixel front camera;
GPS/GLONASS、 Bluetooth 4.1, 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n;
Standard 1500mAh battery;
Support dual card dual standby WCDMA、GSM。
appearance:
Before you complain about the specifications, let's take a look at the appearance. The Z1 is a phone with a strong Samsung flavor at the first sight. Whether it's the overall shape or the key layout, the home key (Z1) at the bottom of the screen The home key of the mobile phone is square, while Samsung's general home key is rectangular or flat) and the hidden touch key are the biggest features of Samsung's appearance design. The Samsung logo and the DUOS logo can be seen on the top of the front of the mobile phone, which means that Z1 supports double cards and double standby, and the opening on the forehead is also greatly reduced. There is only a front camera next to the receiver.
The 3.1 megapixel camera on the back is equipped with an LED fill light. On the other side, a speaker is placed symmetrically. The rest of the body is the conventional power button, volume button and interface.
Not surprisingly, the fuselage of Z1 is made of plastic, but considering the low price, Z1 is quite impressive: the whole machine is very solid. Although the plastic sheet can be removed from the back, it has no sense of cheapness, and it is also firmly held (although the size of the whole machine is also relatively small). The power button and volume button will still make a clattering sound when pressed, reminding the user that this is a cheap phone, but in general, The appearance design and workmanship of Z1 are quite good.
Screen:
As the "face" of the mobile phone, we are glad to see that Z1 has not cut corners on the screen. Although the 4-inch standard WVGA resolution is far from the retinal standard, this screen has excellent brightness performance.
Although that is said, Z1 is not equipped with a light sensor, that is to say, the function of automatically adjusting the screen brightness is also unavailable. In order to solve the problem of decreasing screen readability caused by changes in light from indoor to outdoor environment, there is a switch of "outdoor mode" in the notice bar of Z1. When it is turned on, the screen brightness will be increased to ensure outdoor visibility.
However, this screen can provide very abundant brightness even when the "outdoor mode" is not turned on, and there is no pressure to read outdoors. In addition, the viewing angle of this screen is also very large, and there is no color deviation when viewing from different angles. The contrast of the screen is far above the average level of smartphones at this price, But for those who are used to looking at the flagship smartphone, this screen is still like a fallen leaf in the jungle.
Camera:
Yes, the rear 3.1 megapixel camera of Z1 does not support autofocus, but don't be disappointed. After all, the location and pricing of Z1 are there, and the camera's shrinkage is not unacceptable. Moreover, this camera is quite worthy of the 3.1 megapixel parameter when the light is good, at least not as bad as we think.
As for the front camera with VGA resolution... to be honest, the effect is very bad, even similar to the current camera.
The photographing UI is similar to the UI of Samsung's Galaxy series Android phones. The small screen is crowded with icons. Z1 supports the panoramic mode and the rear camera self portrait mode. The latter principle is to trigger the shutter to take a picture 2 seconds after the face is detected. In the setting menu, you can also adjust the white balance, image resolution, and set the geographical tag or volume key functions.
System:
Finally, we have reached the key point - for such a low-end mobile phone, the new system we are most interested in is not how good the screen, camera and performance are, The Z1 is the first smartphone running the Tizen operating system. Even so, within a week of the launch of the Z1, Samsung has diligently pushed two system updates for Z1 to improve the user experience.
At first glance, the Z1 system, like its appearance, exudes a strong Samsung flavor. The UI design is not much different from Samsung's Android phone. Pressing the Home button in the black screen state can wake up the phone. There is a camera shortcut in the lower right corner of the unlock interface. But once you unlock the system, the difference begins to really reflect.
The foundation of Tizen is naturally the main screen interface. There are a series of shortcuts and widgets on the main screen. There is also a DOCK column at the bottom of the screen, which is lined with eight shortcut icons (yes, eight). Scrawling from the DOCK is to enter the "application drawer" (let's call it that). The number of main screens can be edited, and as long as you want, You can fill every home screen with widgets. The pre installed widgets include calendar, contacts, FM radio, alarm clock, picture library, network, music, weather and world clock.
Tizen's status bar is the same as Android's, but the order of icons in the status bar is different. The notification icons are placed in the upper right corner, and the network icons are placed in the upper left corner, with the clock in the middle. The status bar can be pulled down. After pulling down, there is a notification list and a row of quick control buttons, including Wi Fi, Bluetooth and super power saving mode at the top (although these shortcuts cannot be customized). Below the switch is the brightness adjustment slider, and below the switch is the notification display.
Click the notification to directly launch the corresponding application, and swipe from left to right on the notification to eliminate the notification. However, each notification is not as extensible as that on Android. However, since the Tizen system is in Samsung's hands, it is basically a matter of time for Samsung to add this function to it, and the notification will not disappear automatically, Unless the user opens the view or eliminates it.
When the phone is first started, users can choose to log in to the Samsung account and add an email account or DropBox account. The Tizen system also supports Google and Microsoft email accounts. After logging in, you can synchronize contacts and calendar items. Of course, these things can also be synchronized through the Samsung account. After logging in to DropBox, you will also receive 48GB of free online storage for one year.
Although the Tizen system is "new", its functionality is surprisingly complete. Well, considering that the Tizen mobile phone has been developed for so long, it may not be surprising, Wi-Fi、 Bluetooth and USB network sharing functions are quite mature. There are theme functions in the system, which can change the color matching and icons of the interface. Even the highly praised super power-saving mode on Samsung Android phones has been added, and Tizen can also set the default keyboard - of course, there is no third-party keyboard application in Tizen system at present.
Another serious question: Does Tizen support multitasking? You should know that neither I OS nor W P had this ability when they first came out. The answer is yes. Tizen supports true multitasking. Just like Android, the APP placed in the background is still running normally, and it seems that Tizen does not eat memory. Even if it has only 750MB of RAM, there is no APP overload when switching back and forth between multiple APPs.
For the Tizen system, what I think is missing is a menu button inside the application, which also makes it necessary to use the capacitive menu button to open the menu inside the application. For example, in the image library application, if you want to share pictures or delete pictures, you need to click the physical menu button to operate, There is no prompt in the system. It may not be a problem for people who are used to using the function machine, but it may not be a good feeling for users who switch from Android to Tizen.
App/Store:
To evaluate the success of an intelligent system, the most intuitive thing is to see how many apps the system has, To download third-party applications, the Tizen system must use the built-in Tizen Store. However, from the current number of applications in the Tizen Store, it is quite surprising that there are already a considerable number of native APPs, as well as applications specially developed for Z1's current market (i.e. India), such as the Times of India PayTM (online phone charge recharging tool), TureCaller, etc., and even Zhile Game Company have not yet developed the game of "Little Yellow Man Run". It seems that Samsung has invested a lot in supporting this new system.
In addition, WhatsApp also has. However, this app is actually an Android version app running on the OpenACL simulator, and both the OpenACL simulator and WhatsApp can be downloaded directly from the Tizen app store. That is, users do not need to use Sideload to run Android apps. After the first addition of OpenACL support, it can be used as a native Tizen app.
However, to be honest, the number of Tizen apps is still very scarce. Although Facebook and YouTube both have them, the essence of these apps is still a web version packaged with the application appearance, No wonder Samsung has few Tizen applications, but whether the Tizen system is worth developing exclusive applications for big developers like Facebook depends on Tizen's performance and the attitude of developers.
To make matters worse, Samsung's Tizen mobile phone is aimed at the low-end market, which is certainly not a mistake, or even a very safe practice. The problem lies in the application developers. In order to make profits, application developers will naturally hope to use the paid download mode to provide their own APP, and many applications in the Tizen app store are naturally not free, And it is not meaningful to bet on a system whose future is not clear, even whether it can get the attention of developers.
Performance:
As a new operating system, Tizen naturally has much lower requirements for hardware than the already bloated iOS and Android. So although the hardware of Z1 sounds to have no performance, the smoothness of operation is still excellent. At least there is no pressure to kill Android phones at the same price in seconds, and it is no problem to challenge Android phones at a higher price, The startup speed and running smoothness of applications are quite good, but when some apps are started, there will be a load of 1~2 seconds, but once started, the smoothness is not critical.
In fact, for a mobile phone at this price, the performance of Z1 is really good enough. Even in the place where Note 4 will get stuck sometimes, Z1 will not get stuck. It takes a long time to install the application, but after the installation is completed, the running smoothness of the game of Little Yellow Man Run is enough to compare with higher performance devices, The zoom in and zoom out on the pre installed Nokia HERE map is also very smooth and smooth.
The built-in browser also performs surprisingly well. The web page loads quickly and scrolls smoothly. It is also quite compatible with most websites. It does get stuck when scrolling the page before the page is fully loaded, but once it is loaded, it is smooth. This is good enough for a phone made by Samsung from inside out and only sells for $90, The experience provided by Z1 is even better than that of low-end Galaxy series mobile phones, which makes people wonder what kind of experience the Tizen system can have on the high-performance hardware platform.
Endurance:
The battery capacity of Z1 is only 1500 mA. Although Samsung has made Tizen lightweight as much as possible, the battery life of Z1 is still average. In the case of moderate to heavy use, it is a little stressful to use the battery all day, but it is only the case of inserting a SIM card, and a night's standby will consume 8% to 9% of the power, Other mobile phones consume 2% of the power, which is already the sky high.
Fortunately, Samsung's super power-saving mode can still effectively extend the use time of Z1. After limiting the application startup and closing the background data, connection and task processing, the improvement of endurance is very obvious. However, for Samsung, the Tizen system still needs to be further optimized to reduce the standby power consumption, especially.
Summary:
There is a saying at the top: Z1 is a good phone, at least compared with other low-end phones, especially other Samsung low-end phones, but is it worth buying? Well, Z1 is currently only available in India. At this price, unless you are quite curious about the new system, Z1, which lacks third-party applications, will not be your best choice.
Of course, Tizen's most direct competitor is the Android One mobile phone, which has better hardware specifications and a more complete Android operating system, and the Android native butter also makes these low-end mobile phones very smooth, The smoothness of Z1 has no advantage in front of these competitors, and even in the face of Lumia series phones, the real king of screen cutting, the Tizen system is still childish.
However, for those buyers who want to experience a new intelligent system or need a spare tire phone, the Z1 is quite good. For function phone users, the Z1 will also be a good choice. But for others, the Z1 has limited appeal, and the three stars need to redouble their efforts to make Tizen thrive.
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