Following the appearance of leaked photos showing Tizen 3.0 running on Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 phone, new rumors say the upcoming Galaxy S 5 smartphone will be available in both Android and Tizen versions. Samsung has long said it plans to ship a phone running the Linux-based Tizen OS this year

Against the background of Android’s market share surging, more news is bubbling up on the mobile Linux OS front, with Jolla yesterday announcing Android app and hardware compatibility for its Sailfish OS. Now, new phones have been spotted running Tizen and Firefox OS.

Samsung has long said it plans to ship a phone running the Linux-based Tizen OS this year, although in July the company said it was delaying the launch to this fall rather than this summer. In August, despite rumors that Samsung was further slowing its Tizen development, Tizen Indonesia claimed that Samsung would introduce its first Tizen smartphone — a GT-I8800 model — in October in Japan, France, the U.S., China, and Russia.

Tizen 3.0 running on Galaxy S4
(source: Tizen Indonesia blog)
 

On Sept. 7, the same Tizen Indonesia site posted some photos of a Galaxy S 4 smartphone running an early version of Tizen 3.0. Version 3.0 of the Samsung- and Intel-backed Tizen OS will ship in March 2014, says the story. Back in May, Intel gave an intriguing demo of Tizen 3.0 running on an x86-based laptop.

Now IBTimes has suggested that Samsung is even planning to offer Tizen in some of its next-generation Galaxy S 5 phones, expected “several months away.” The report notes that the co-CEO of Samsung, Boo-Keun Yoon, said that “the company plans to use Tizen on connecting all of their devices which includes mobile phones and tablets as well.” It then suggests Samsung will release its flagship phone in both Android and Tizen versions.

The short and oddly-worded IBTimes report is none too clear on its sources or confidence level. Yet, the story goes on to say that the Galaxy S 5 will also run Android 4.4, and offer an optical image stabilization camera and an exterior made of aluminum and magnesium. The Galaxy S 4 has been widely critiqued for its flimsy plastic casing.

IBTimes is not the first to suggest that the Galaxy S 5 will run Android 4.4, which was recently tipped by Google to bear the codename “KitKat.” Some have suggested that to match Apple’s newly announced, 64-bit iPhone 5s, Android 4.4 will also offer 64-bit ARM processor support, presumably referring to the upcoming Cortex-A53 and/or –A57 designs. Android 4.3 is expected to be released in October.

If Samsung is indeed planning on adding Tizen to its flagship Galaxy S 5 model, that suggests a more aggressive push for Tizen than simply releasing a few market-testing devices for the emerging nation market, as has been speculated. It would appear, however, that the Galaxy S 5 would be a follow-on to a Tizen-only phone expected to be released for the holiday market.