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Samsung may have pledged a stronger focus on open OS smartphones this year, but it continues to develop its homegrown software platforms aggressively too, building up its own developer community and store. The latest move is to upgrade its TouchWiz customizable user interface, which it will show off at the upcoming Mobile World Congress along with the first handset running its new apps platform, bada.

The user interface, and indeed bada itself, can in theory run with any OS, but the early work has been on Samsung's own embedded operating systems. TouchWiz, introduced in 2008, will now come in a new version optimized for touchscreens and for bada. It will introduce new touch interaction features and a simplified user experience, building on its widgets-based interface.

The Korean giant has also revealed more details of the bada developer platform, which is heavily geared to multimedia and rich web apps. It uses many standard web tools, and sports over 30 common controls. These include a Flash control to embed Flash-based content in apps, browser control for embedding web media, plus motion sensing, vibration control and face detection tools. There is also support for context aware applications via various accelerometers, and sensors for tilt, weather, proximity and activity.

Bada will also focus intensely on optimizing the end user experience of web services, such as social networking, content management, ecommerce and device synchronization. Like most modern widget-based UIs, it leverages the phone's contact book and GPS chip to enhance 'social location'.

While the jury is out on how far Samsung will deliver a ground breaking software experience, it has certainly led the field in mobile displays, and the MWC show will see the first product with its latest AMOLED screen. This will incorporate integrated capacitive touch sensors, to reduce weight and thickness - the touch elements are placed directly on the AMOLED display cells, which adds only 0.001mm of extra thickness, but supports full responsiveness, says Samsung.Traditional capacitive touchscreens overlay a glass cover separated from the display itself by an air gap. Apple recently gained a patent for a similar approach to integrating display and sensor technology into a single element to cut power and weight.

Samsung has yet to announce a specific phone with the new screen but it could turn up in the 'Galaxy 2', the third in the firm's Android line-up. Leaks suggest this phone will sport the latest Android release, 2.1, the 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, and a 5-megapixel camera, putting it head-to-head with HTC Bravo and Google Nexus One.

Samsung also boasts the first consumer device to include the new Bluetooth 3.0 standard. The GT-S8500 has a 3.1-inch, anti-reflective OLED screen and the TouchWiz UI. It, and Galaxy 2, are likely to ship around midyear.

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