NX300M is the First Smart Camera Running on Samsung Tizen; Android Rival

Samsung's refreshed NX300M smart camera has already been on sale for more than a month in Korea, but only now is one of its prime features coming to light.

At a recent developer summit, the company confirmed that the 20.3-megapixel shooter is actually running a camera-focused build of its open-source Tizen software.

Tizen, the alternative operating system Samsung and Intel have been working on for some time, may be taking its sweet time to reach the smartphone products, but is has made its debut in an unexpected device.

Samsung has relied on Android for some of its cameras so far, but has also quietly released Tizen-powered developer tablets and ported the OS to the Galaxy S4, showing off what it can do without Google's Android OS.

Samsung says the Tizen used by the NX300M it's an alternative to Linux. It cites a booting speed twice as fast as Linux, and enhanced capture performance, and is capable of shooting at nine shots a second.

To that same end, Nokia announced today it will power "maps-related functionalities" in future Tizen devices, giving Samsung (and its partners) a chance to further reduce its dependency on Google services.