14 DAY TRIAL // bada 2.0, the latest flavor of Samsung's own mobile operating system, is now officially available, roughly two years after the first devices running under the OS were launched on the market. Seven mobile phones are available at the moment with the bada platform on them, all coming from Samsung, and enjoying increasing sales all around the world, the handset vendor unveiled.
Europe, China and Southeast Asia are some of the markets that received the bada platform and the handsets it runs on warmly, courtesy of both the affordability and functionality they have to offer.
With bada, the South Korean mobile phone maker managed to introduce existing Samsung feature phone users to applications and services that are available on smartphones, due to an appealing touch interface and a great user-experience.
bada 2.0 was initially announced during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and comes with a wide range of great new features and improvements into the mix.
Among these enhancements, we can count multi-tasking, and voice recognition capabilities, along with Wi-Fi Direct, and Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality to enable mobile payments.
Moreover, the new mobile OS flavor comes with support for HTML5, as well as with better Flash functions, all aimed at providing users with a much better experience than before.
“Samsung bada and our Wave devices continue to succeed around the world, taking advantage of the mobile technology and brand awareness of Samsung's leadership in the market,” said JK Shin, president and head of Samsung's Mobile Communications Business.
“We have brought together our key mobile innovations in bada 2.0, setting the foundation for it to become a leading mobile platform.”
Developers also benefit from a new set of features, such as support for In-app Ads, available courtesy of an Ads API in the bada SDK 2.0, which will offer application developers the possibility to better monetize their software.
The SDK also comes with an emulator for improving the application building process, as well as with various other tools, including a Profiler, and more.
The mobile phone maker also announced that its 'Samsung Apps' store was enhanced as well. The storefront, which includes a number of more than 40,000 applications, is available for users in 121 countries, and already enjoys increased downloads.
The new bada 2.0 SDK is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link. More info on the new bada 2.0 platform is available in the video below.