Much has been said about Android 4.4 KitKat being light enough to run great on devices with as low as 512MB RAM, as Google finally looked towards optimizing its popular mobile OS for low-end devices, a market segment where Windows Phone devices like the Nokia Lumia 520 were threatening to eat into Android's market share. But it seems Samsung might not have much to worry about in this case when it launches its upcoming OS Tizen, as it will be able to run just fine on devices with as low as 256MB of RAM.
Called ‘Tizen Lite', the lighter version of the OS will have support for a maximum display resolution of 320×480, and will require only 512MB of ROM space for the OS to be stored and run (for the mid-range and high-end), Tizen's minimum requirements stand at 512MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM, while it supports display resolutions of up to 1280×720. With Samsung and Intel hoping to see Tizen power a wide variety of devices, Tizen Lite will go a long way in helping them achieve that goal – low-end and mid-range devices is where the next bout of growth in the smartphone is bound to take place, and Samsung would want to be ready for it from the start, instead of waiting for years like Google did before optimizing things for devices with limited hardware resources.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Tizen will become an instant hit and start challenging Android and iOS since day one, but hey, never hurts to be prepared right from the beginning, right? Expect Tizen-powered phones to be launched in the first quarter of 2014, though it will likely be a while before we see devices running on Tizen Lite.
