Bada (operating system)
Encyclopedia
Bada is an operating system for mobile devices
such as smartphone
s and tablet computer
s. It is developed by the Samsung Electronics
. Its name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in Korean
. It ranges from low-end feature phone
s to high-end smartphones.
To foster adoption of Bada OS, Samsung is reportedly considering releasing the source code under an open-source license, and expanding device support to include Smart TV
s.
in February 2010. At that time, applications running on the first Bada phone were demonstrated, including Gameloft
's Asphalt 5
.
After the launch, companies such as Twitter
, EA, Capcom
, Gameloft
and Blockbuster showed their support for the Bada platform.
In May 2010, Samsung released a beta of their Bada software development kit
(SDK) to attract developers. Samsung also began the Bada Developer Challenge with a total prize of $2,700,000 (USD).
In August 2010, Samsung released version 1.0 of the SDK.
In August 2011, Samsung released version 2.0 of the SDK. This new version provides many enhancements over its predecessors.
The first Bada-based phone was the Samsung Wave S8500, released on June 1, 2010, which sold one million handsets in its first 4 weeks on the market.
, for the Bada platform.
In July 2010, Samsung Apps had 300 applications to offer, 70% of them being free. Samsung expected to have 7000 applications in its application store by the end of 2010. It did not achieve this aim and had around 3000 applications at the end of the first quarter of 2011.
configurable architecture, which allows using either a proprietary real-time operating system
(RTOS) kernel, or the Linux kernel
. According to copyrights displayed by Samsung Wave S8500
, it uses code from FreeBSD
, NetBSD
and OpenBSD
, although other phones might use Linux
instead.
On the kernel are layers for devices, services, and frameworks. The device layer provides core functions such as graphics, protocols, telephony and security. The service layer provides more service-centric features such as SMS
, mapping and in-app-purchasing. To provide such features there is a so-called bada Server. The top layer, the framework layer provides an application programming interface
(API) in C++ for application developers to use.
Bada provides various UI controls to developers: It provides assorted basic UI controls such as Listbox, Color Picker and Tab, has a web browser
control based on the open-source WebKit
, and features Adobe Flash
, supporting Flash 9, or 10 in Bada 2.0. Both the WebKit and Flash can be embedded inside native Bada applications. Bada supports OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API and offers interactive mapping with point of interest
(POI) features, which can also be embedded inside native applications. It supports pinch-to-zoom, tabbed browsing
and cut, copy, and paste features.
Bada supports many mechanisms to enhance interaction, which can be incorporated into applications. These include various sensors such as motion sensing, vibration control, face detection
, accelerometer
, magnetometer
, tilt, Global Positioning System
(GPS), and multi-touch
.
Native applications are developed in C++
with the Bada SDK
, and the Eclipse
based integrated development environment
(IDE). GNU-based tool chains are used for building and debugging applications. The IDE also contains UI Builder, with which developers can easily design the interface of their applications by dragging and dropping UI controls into forms. For testing and debugging, the IDE contains an emulator which can run apps.
SGX 3D graphics engine, "Super AMOLED" screen and 720p high-def video capabilities.
The Samsung S8530 Wave II was made available in November 2010. It has a 3.7" Super Clear capacitive LCD touchscreen. It is preloaded with Bada 1.2.
At the end of August 2011, Samsung announced three new models which will all ship with Bada 2.0. The Samsung Wave 3 will be a high-end model featuring 1.4GHz CPU with integrated PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, 4" AMOLED screen and 5MP camera. The Wave M and Wave Y will be lower-priced models, using slower CPUs, smaller LCD screens, and lacking other features found in the Wave 3.
Some publications have criticised Bada over the following issues:
However these issues will be resolved in the upcoming Bada 2.0. Samsung Bada 2.0 OS new features will include also following updates: HTML5, full multitasking, adobe flash 11, smart-wallpapers, text-to-speech, push notification, near-field communication, new security policies and protection functions, and OpenAL
. The next Bada version was shown at IFA 2011 in Berlin.
, Samsung shipped 3.5 million phones running Bada in Q1 of 2011. This rose to 4.5 million phones in Q2 of 2011.
Mobile operating system
A mobile operating system, also known as a mobile OS, mobile software platform or a handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device or information appliance—similar in principle to an operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux distributions that controls a...
such as smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
s and tablet computer
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
s. It is developed by the Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics is a South Korean multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul...
. Its name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
. It ranges from low-end feature phone
Feature phone
A feature phone is a mobile phone that, like smartphones, combines the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone.Today's models typically also serve as portable media players and camera phones with touchscreen, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband access.Feature phones is...
s to high-end smartphones.
To foster adoption of Bada OS, Samsung is reportedly considering releasing the source code under an open-source license, and expanding device support to include Smart TV
Smart TV
Smart TV, which is also sometimes referred to as "Connected TV" or "Hybrid TV", , is the phrase used to describe the current trend of integration of the internet and Web 2.0 features into modern television sets and set-top boxes, as well as the technological convergence between computers and these...
s.
History
After the announcement, the Wave S8500 was first shown at Mobile World Congress 2010 in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
in February 2010. At that time, applications running on the first Bada phone were demonstrated, including Gameloft
Gameloft
Gameloft SA is a major French computer and video game developer and publisher headquartered in Paris, France. The company also has subsidiaries in 31 countries around the world....
's Asphalt 5
Asphalt 5
Asphalt 5 is a racing game published and developed by Gameloft. It is a sequel to Asphalt 4: Elite Racing. The game was released for iOS and Palm Pre in 2009.- Gameplay :...
.
After the launch, companies such as Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, EA, Capcom
Capcom
is a Japanese developer and publisher of video games, known for creating multi-million-selling franchises such as Devil May Cry, Chaos Legion, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Capcom developed and published Bionic Commando, Lost Planet and Dark Void too, but they are less known. Its...
, Gameloft
Gameloft
Gameloft SA is a major French computer and video game developer and publisher headquartered in Paris, France. The company also has subsidiaries in 31 countries around the world....
and Blockbuster showed their support for the Bada platform.
In May 2010, Samsung released a beta of their Bada software development kit
Software development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
(SDK) to attract developers. Samsung also began the Bada Developer Challenge with a total prize of $2,700,000 (USD).
In August 2010, Samsung released version 1.0 of the SDK.
In August 2011, Samsung released version 2.0 of the SDK. This new version provides many enhancements over its predecessors.
The first Bada-based phone was the Samsung Wave S8500, released on June 1, 2010, which sold one million handsets in its first 4 weeks on the market.
Versions
The Samsung S8500 Wave was launched with version 1.0 of the Bada operating system. Soon after the launch, Samsung released version 1.0.2, which included minor fixes for European users. The latest version 1.2 was released with the Samsung S8530 Wave II phone. The alpha-version of Bada 2.0 was introduced on February 15, 2011, with Samsung S8600 Wave III.Samsung Apps
With the release of the Samsung Wave, Samsung opened an international application store, Samsung AppsSamsung Apps
Samsung Apps, is an application store for Samsung mobile & TV users. The store first opened in June 2010, after the company released its Samsung Wave smartphone...
, for the Bada platform.
In July 2010, Samsung Apps had 300 applications to offer, 70% of them being free. Samsung expected to have 7000 applications in its application store by the end of 2010. It did not achieve this aim and had around 3000 applications at the end of the first quarter of 2011.
Architecture
Bada, as Samsung defines it, is not an operating system itself, but a platform with a kernelKernel (computing)
In computing, the kernel is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources...
configurable architecture, which allows using either a proprietary real-time operating system
Real-time operating system
A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...
(RTOS) kernel, or the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
. According to copyrights displayed by Samsung Wave S8500
Samsung Wave S8500
The Samsung Wave GT-S8500 is the first touchscreen smartphone running the new bada operating system designed by Samsung, which was commercially released on June 1, 2010...
, it uses code from FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
and OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
, although other phones might use Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
instead.
On the kernel are layers for devices, services, and frameworks. The device layer provides core functions such as graphics, protocols, telephony and security. The service layer provides more service-centric features such as SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
, mapping and in-app-purchasing. To provide such features there is a so-called bada Server. The top layer, the framework layer provides an application programming interface
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
(API) in C++ for application developers to use.
Bada provides various UI controls to developers: It provides assorted basic UI controls such as Listbox, Color Picker and Tab, has a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
control based on the open-source WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
, and features Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, supporting Flash 9, or 10 in Bada 2.0. Both the WebKit and Flash can be embedded inside native Bada applications. Bada supports OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API and offers interactive mapping with point of interest
Point of interest
A point of interest, or POI, is a specific point location that someone may find useful or interesting. An example is a point on the Earth representing the location of the Space Needle, or a point on Mars representing the location of the mountain, Olympus Mons.The term is widely used in...
(POI) features, which can also be embedded inside native applications. It supports pinch-to-zoom, tabbed browsing
Tab (GUI)
In the area of graphical user interfaces , a tabbed document interface is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents...
and cut, copy, and paste features.
Bada supports many mechanisms to enhance interaction, which can be incorporated into applications. These include various sensors such as motion sensing, vibration control, face detection
Face detection
Face detection is a computer technology that determines the locations and sizes of human faces in arbitrary images. It detects facial features and ignores anything else, such as buildings, trees and bodies....
, accelerometer
Accelerometer
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, also called the four-acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration , but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame...
, magnetometer
Magnetometer
A magnetometer is a measuring instrument used to measure the strength or direction of a magnetic field either produced in the laboratory or existing in nature...
, tilt, Global Positioning System
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...
(GPS), and multi-touch
Multi-touch
In computing, multi-touch refers to a touch sensing surface's ability to recognize the presence of two or more points of contact with the surface...
.
Native applications are developed in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
with the Bada SDK
Software development kit
A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
, and the Eclipse
Eclipse (software)
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
based integrated development environment
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
(IDE). GNU-based tool chains are used for building and debugging applications. The IDE also contains UI Builder, with which developers can easily design the interface of their applications by dragging and dropping UI controls into forms. For testing and debugging, the IDE contains an emulator which can run apps.
Devices
Samsung's first phone running the Bada platform was the Wave S8500. The Wave is a slim touchscreen phone powered by Samsung's "Hummingbird" CPU (S5PC110), which includes a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and a built-in PowerVRPowerVR
PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and Direct X, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL acceleration....
SGX 3D graphics engine, "Super AMOLED" screen and 720p high-def video capabilities.
The Samsung S8530 Wave II was made available in November 2010. It has a 3.7" Super Clear capacitive LCD touchscreen. It is preloaded with Bada 1.2.
At the end of August 2011, Samsung announced three new models which will all ship with Bada 2.0. The Samsung Wave 3 will be a high-end model featuring 1.4GHz CPU with integrated PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, 4" AMOLED screen and 5MP camera. The Wave M and Wave Y will be lower-priced models, using slower CPUs, smaller LCD screens, and lacking other features found in the Wave 3.
Criticism
- All VOIP over wifi applications were banned which means that popular applications such as Skype cannot be used. In March 2011 this restriction was removed, allowing VOIP applications to run on the platform.
Some publications have criticised Bada over the following issues:
- The external sensor APIApplication programming interfaceAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
is not open-ended, preventing new types of sensors or unexpected technology developments from being added in the future. - Due to "performance and privacy issues", Bada 1.x applications cannot access the SMS/MMS inbox or receive incoming SMS/MMS notifications.
- Bada versions 1.x only allowed one Bada third party application to run at a time. Multitasking applications was only possible between the base applications and one Bada application. This limit is removed since version 2.0.
However these issues will be resolved in the upcoming Bada 2.0. Samsung Bada 2.0 OS new features will include also following updates: HTML5, full multitasking, adobe flash 11, smart-wallpapers, text-to-speech, push notification, near-field communication, new security policies and protection functions, and OpenAL
OpenAL
OpenAL is a cross-platform audio API. It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL.- History :...
. The next Bada version was shown at IFA 2011 in Berlin.
Market shares
According to CanalysCanalys
Canalys is an independent technology focused analyst house. It offers its clients market intelligence, analysis and strategic consultancy about trends and activity in a range of high-tech markets, and with route-to-market strategies...
, Samsung shipped 3.5 million phones running Bada in Q1 of 2011. This rose to 4.5 million phones in Q2 of 2011.
External links
- bada Developers, official developer site
- Samsung Apps, applications for Samsung mobile devices
- bada History bada History