There’s news today that may particularly interest those readers who like to hear about mobile developments as Samsung has revealed a prototype smartphone running Tizen 1.0, a new Linux-based OS, currently being worked on. It was shown at a developer’s conference in San Francisco and we also have a video that you can view.

Whether the new Tizen operating system has more potential than webOS or Meego remains to be seen but it’s always interesting to see new developments in this sphere. The prototype phone certainly gives a taste of what the Tizen UI will look like along with some of the core functionality.

The prototype developers unit has a 4.3-inch 720p HD display along with what is thought to be a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Stills from Tizen Talk show the unit and the seven-minute video that we’ve embedded below this story comes courtesy of The Handheld Blog, who have given their initial impressions of the new OS.

Engadget reports that the prototype could be the Samsung GT-I9500 that has been mentioned recently and although Tizen is currently shown in a very unpolished pre-release state it appeared to run nice and smoothly. It seems to be inspired by Samsung’s TouchWiz with a pull down notifications area, WiFi and Bluetooth toggles and multiple homescreens. Built-in support for social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Gmail is evident even though the Tizen 1.0 OS (codenamed Larkspur) is in its early days. However it was noted that the HTML5 apps showed a bit of lag.

As said though, this is very early days and hopefully we’ll be hearing much more very shortly about the new Tizen operating system. Take a look at the video of Tizen 1.0 on the Samsung prototype phone and let us know what you think. Although in its initial stages of development do you think there’s room for a new mobile OS on the market?