Samsung Z2 Release Date and News: Company Unveils First Tizen-Powered Z2 Smartphone; Features and Pricing
In a straightforward appeal to India's smartphone users, Samsung launched the Z2, its first 4G-enabled Tizen-powered smartphone, for only $68 or around 4,590 rupees. That's just two dollars less than the average price of a smartphone in India and hundreds of dollars below an average smartphone anywhere else.
Of course, the Z2 isn't exactly a premium phone. It comes pretty decent though. It sports a 1.5 GHz Quadcore processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB internal memory. It has a dual-sim capacity and is juiced up by a 1,500 mAh battery. It's also equipped with a 4-inch WVGA screen as well as a 5MP rear and VGA front shooter.
It also comes in three colors: gold, black, and wine red.
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Other features of the Z2
With its 4G connection, users can avail of a 90-day trial for entertainment apps from the Indian mobile operator, Jio. They can get free access to video calls, movies, TV shows and a music streaming service. Jio hopes that if users enjoy its content, they may start subscribing to the network.
Some of its features, however, are tailor-made for Indian users. There's a bike mode which enables users to field calls as well as an Ultra Data Saving mode, which will compress mobile data to nearly 40 percent. Apart from this, Samsung is also putting up a $185,000 prize for Indian developers to create games for Tizen, Samsung's homegrown mobile OS.
How it stands to gain from the Indian smartphone market
It's no surprise that Samsung is attempting to break into the Indian market. Previously, analysts from Morgan Stanley remarked that the Indian smartphone market is similar to what China was six years ago, but is more price sensitive.
Moreover, they speculated that India may be the most important country for smartphone developers as it begins to overtake the US in terms of number of units to become the second largest smartphone market. In fact, it grew nearly five times faster than China, currently the world's largest smartphone market.
Surprisingly, however, it's harder to convince Indian smartphone users to pay up for new smartphones. Culturally, they prefer switching or trading given the ease of wear and tear from the pollution in the country. Meanwhile, there is limited availability of LTE and 4G there which means there's really no need for them to avail of the flagship phones.
However, Samsung does stand to gain from this move. According to a report from CNBC, Samsung and Micromax has better name recognition than Apple.
