MetaDesign Solutions
MetaDesign SolutionsBuilding a feature-rich news app for Samsung's Tizen OS using Angular and Tizen SDK, enabling Jagran’s vernacular news content for a new mobile OS platform, overcoming early-stage technology challenges
Overview
MetaDesign Solutions was enlisted as a vendor for Samsung to port the popular Jagran News App from Android and iOS to the new Tizen OS. Using Angular and Tizen SDK, the app was developed to integrate seamlessly with Jagran’s RSS feed and APIs, offering content to consumers on Samsung devices running Tizen OS. The project involved overcoming SDK limitations and lack of community support for the newly launched OS, ensuring a smooth user experience for Samsung customers accessing Jagran’s news content.
about the client
Samsung is a global leader in electronics and a key player in the mobile industry, with a vast range of devices spanning smartphones, tablets, and more. In their efforts to expand the Tizen OS as a viable alternative to Android and iOS, Samsung launched a campaign to attract popular applications for their app store. As part of this initiative, Samsung engaged MetaDesign Solutions to develop a Tizen-compatible version of the Jagran app, one of India’s most widely read vernacular newspapers.
Jagran is a leading North Indian media house known for its extensive coverage in Hindi and other regional languages, reaching millions of readers daily. Their digital platform is highly popular on Android and iOS devices, and Samsung sought to replicate this success on its newly launched Tizen OS. The goal was to bring Jagran’s rich content, delivered through RSS feeds and APIs, to Samsung’s Tizen-powered devices to attract more users to the platform.
Industry Domain
Technology, Media
Service Category (Service-line)
Mobile App Development / Tizen App Development
Technologies Used
Tizen SDK
Angular
RSS
Web API
Challenges
New Technology Platform: Tizen OS was a new entrant in the market, and its SDK was still evolving, offering limited documentation and support.
Integration Complexity: Integrating RSS feeds and APIs from Jagran’s established infrastructure to work smoothly with the Tizen web-based SDK presented a unique challenge.
Optimizing Performance: The app had to be optimized for performance, ensuring smooth content delivery and display across various Samsung devices running Tizen.
No Community Support: Due to the early stage of Tizen’s development, there was no established developer community or open-source resources to assist in solving challenges.
Solution Scope and Services
MetaDesign Solutions took on the task of developing a Tizen OS version of the Jagran app, which was initially available only on Android and iOS platforms. Using the Tizen SDK, which operates largely as a web development tool, the development team created a version of the app built on Angular. The primary objective was to replicate the core functionality of the Jagran app—displaying rich news content—while ensuring compatibility with Tizen’s architecture.
To meet this goal, we integrated the web interface with Jagran’s RSS feed, which fetched real-time news updates, and APIs provided by the Jagran team. These integrations were key to maintaining the app’s content relevance and delivering a seamless user experience. Despite the limitations and lack of community support for Tizen, MetaDesign Solutions successfully navigated these challenges by developing custom solutions and workarounds to ensure app functionality.
Cross-Platform Development Using Angular
By choosing Angular as the front-end framework, we ensured that the development process was efficient, enabling us to replicate key features from the Android and iOS versions. Angular’s flexibility allowed for the seamless integration of APIs and RSS feeds, ensuring that the content delivery experience mirrored that of other platforms.
Optimizing for Tizen SDK
The decision to use the Tizen SDK presented unique challenges, as it was still in its early stages. Our team worked through the limitations by developing custom solutions and leveraging in-house expertise to fill gaps left by the lack of community or documentation. This approach helped deliver a stable and smooth-running application for Tizen users.
Delivering High-Performance News Delivery
With real-time news being a key feature of the Jagran app, performance optimization was critical. Our team focused on ensuring that the integration of RSS feeds and APIs ran smoothly, offering users a fast, responsive interface to access up-to-date news content.
Results
The successful development of the Jagran app for Samsung’s Tizen OS demonstrated MetaDesign Solutions’ ability to work with emerging technologies and overcome the hurdles of a new platform. By leveraging Angular and Tizen SDK, we ensured that Samsung’s Tizen users had access to high-quality news content from Jagran, helping Samsung expand the appeal of its new OS. The application launch was a positive step towards growing the Tizen ecosystem, offering value to Samsung’s customers while extending Jagran’s digital footprint.