- Yves "Jack" Albuquerque
Unity-Tizen
Not popular as Android, iOS Windows or Linux, Tizen is the next big thing. Probably you never heard about Tizen, but, believe-me when I say that you will.
Tizen is an open-source multi-platform SO, but please, don't think about Linux here. There's nothing like Linux on Tizen. Tizen is already used on mobiles, smartwatch and smartTVs but I can assure you that this is only the beginning.
Usually, new platforms presents an interesting ROI and this is no different on Tizen. So that's why I'll tell you a little bit about Tizen-Unity deployment.
A year and a half ago, I wasn`t producing anything cool, instead, I was doing some tests with Unity deploy for Tizen.
The main issue, at the time, was Tizen initial setup. I took about 3 to 4 days before my "Hello World"
At that time, only Samsung Z1 runs Tizen so that was my target. Z1 is a low-end mobile device, which means that is a very limited device. With a Mali-400 (The same used on Samsung S3, on Samsung 2013 TVs, on Gear S2) it should be only able to run Shader Model 2, but with my previous experience, that isn't a big issue.
Z1 is armed with a dual-core of 1.2Ghz and only 768 RAM memory, Z1 was indeed a very limited piece of hardware. Memory is the biggest problem here since it results in crash, specially, when changing scenes.
As myself at that time, several people expect the worst of Tizen, but before judging something we really need to be surrounded with data so I compared Z1 with Samsung Core II. Samsung Core II is a device with a better processor but with the other hardware configurations similar to the ones in Z1.
How big was my surprise. Tizen really worked well here with more or less the same performance as Samsung Core II even with the inferior processor.
After that, I faced Tizen deploy once in a while. Tizen is much more powerful and friendly now than it use to be, however, the initial setup still a little painful with the signature process being the most #*%#% annoying thing I ever see. But if you have a little patience... you'll be prepared for 2017.