Samsung will abandon its own Bada OS in favor of Tizen, the Linux-based smartphone operating system the company has been developing with Intel. The low-end market will lose one OS and gain another with its best features later this year.

Sprint has announced that it has joined the Tizen Association, which oversees the development of the open-source Tizen smartphone platform. Sprint is the first North American carrier to join the group, and it joins NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK telecom, Telefónica, and Vodafone, which are already members.

Tizen, the open-source smartphone OS project that features support from Intel, Panasonic, Samsung, and various carriers, has reached version 1.0 status. The Tizen 1.0 Larkspur edition is the first non-beta release of the platform, and it features improved connectivity and web browsing abilities. Developers can download the source code and SDK to create apps for the platform now. Tizen's developers say that there will be frequent updates for the platform released over the coming weeks.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Huawei announced that it will manufacture mobile devices using Intel's Tizen operating system. Tizen is an open source Linux based mobile OS that has its roots in the MeeGo, Maemo, and Moblin platforms. Huawei joins other Tizen board members Samsung, Panasonic, Intel, Casio, NEC, NTT Docomo, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefonica, and Vodafone. The Tizen association also announced that the availability of its beta open source release and a Windows version of programming tools to develop Tizen apps.