Originally planned for July, Samsung has now released the bada version 2.0 SDK.

The proprietary OS, which is designed for low and mid-range smartphones with a resolution of 240x400, 320x480 or 480x800, has become more strategically important to the company following Google's acquisition of Motorola and subsequent uncertainties over Android.

It's particularly popular in India where Samsung hopes to gain 30 percent market share.

Moving forward

Bada 2.0 features several significant improvements including multi-tasking, three possible user interface navigation styles, support for near field communications, and direct wi-fi communication between devices without the need for a hotspot.

There are plenty of off-device features too.

One important addition is APIs for in-app advertising so you can add banners and text ads into your applications. Push notifications and enhanced supported for Flash and HTML5 are welcome enhancements, while developers also get better performance analysis and profiling tools.

And, from bada 2.0 onwards, developers can build their entire application using web technologies such as JavaScript Framework, HTML5 and WAC APIs.

You can find out more about bada 2.0 and get the SDK from Samsung's developer site.