It was a huge week for mobile computing – Amazon, Google and Samsung were among the week's hottest app releases and product/platform launches.

Here's rollApp's top five news stories of the week (June 23-27, 2014). Of course, we didn't include anything the FIFA World Cup-related but, hey, you can always follow Alexi Lalas on Twitter @AlexiLalas.

Without further ado, let's go.

1. All dates are finally set. rollApp will be launching 50+ applications at Tizen Samsung Z Unpacked Event in Moscow, Russia on July 10, 2014.

From the hands-on with Samsung Z by Ashiq Nazir: "We do not have any lag with the user interface that many android users seem to detest with hardware manufacturers own custom user interface skins that run on top of vanilla android, another reason to come over to Tizen."

2. Android’s upcoming L release reveals its ‘L Developer Preview’, an early glimpse at the next version of Android. During its I/O keynote, Google showcased "a detailed approach to typography and spacing" and created new design guidelines.


Everything Google announced at Google I/O 2014 in one handy list.

3. Google Play for Education comes to Chromebooks:


"Google Play for Education started with tablets, but teachers told us they wanted to use it to find apps, books, and videos for Chromebooks too. So today we’re expanding Google Play for Education to US K-12 Chromebook schools." said Pratip Banerji, Product Manager. "Share Chrome apps instantly, with the whole class or with individual students. Soon we’re adding brand new apps from partners."

4. Amazon released a new device - the Fire Phone: "The new phone’s sexiest feature is Firefly. At a push of a button on the side of the phone, the back camera recognizes products in the real world, with bar codes and other product information, then displays ways to buy the product on Amazon."

"The biggest challenge of modern UI design is knowing when to stop. The current leaders in mobile computing have already learned this through hard-won experience. Amazon will figure it out eventually too, if it doesn’t charm its users to death first." ~ Amazon’s Fire Phone May Be Too Magical for Its Own Good.

5. Upcoming Linux Foundation and Tizen events announced:

The Tizen Developer Summit in Seoul, Korea November 11-12 and Shanghai, China October 27 - 29, 2014.


If your favourite mobile computing news isn't here or there's anything else that you think would be good to be included, let us know in the comments or on Twitter (@rollApp).

On June 2-4, 2014 team rollApp, including our CTO Dima Malenko, visited the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco where we met awesome community of developers and #TDCSF14 hosts, took pictures with the new Samsung Z smartphone and a prototype Tizen TV (see below), but, most importantly, shared our experience about porting 50+ desktop apps to Tizen. The list included all sorts of apps from text editors, spreadsheets and other productivity tools to games, graphics, and educational apps.

What's Tizen, anyway? 

Tizen is a Linux-based open-source operating system developed by Samsung. It's designed not only for smartphones – where it's going to become a real alternative to Android – but it also comes in multiple profiles to serve different industry requirements. The current Tizen profiles are Tizen IVI (in-vehicle infotainment), Tizen Mobile, Tizen TV, and Tizen Wearable. The Tizen project resides within the Linux Foundation and is governed by a Technical Steering Group.

Samsung's first Tizen OS phone, the Samsung Z, will only be available in Russia in Q3 and, rumored, the launches in other countries would follow. Tizen phone users will be able to find and install rollApp applications through Tizen Store (also to be launched soon).
rollApp Presentation: What We Learned From Porting 50+ Cloud Apps to Tizen

Our CTO @dmalenko on stage at #TDCSF14 Sharing lessons we’ve learned from porting productivity apps & games to Tizen pic.twitter.com/oYhZ5eYpQc
— rollApp (@rollapp) June 4, 2014

We’ve discovered a lot about Tizen, which broadened our vision on developing cross-platform cloud applications. In this presentation we're sharing some of the lessons we’ve learned in the following areas:

• Maintaining cross-platform compatibility, while taking the most out of each supported device and OS; conforming to platform guidelines and dealing with the certification process; 
• Optimizing user experience for the Tizen; 
• Performance optimization; 
• Dealing with Web standards and features beyond the scope of the standards.

Here are the slides of the talk on SlideShare and we hope to be able to post soon a link to a video of the presentation.

What We Learned From Porting 50+ Cloud Apps to Tizen from Dima Malenko

Visited Tizen Developer Conference 2014? Find and tag yourself in our photo album on Facebook or just give us a like! 

Post by rollApp.