14 ms·

KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

290 points by fstephany 9y ago

di1eep 9y ago
This is actually based off the Mozilla project - 'boot to gecko'
- abrowne 9y ago
  ... more well known as Firefox OS.
msoad 9y ago
Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and architectures firm multiple parties that don't specially care about your platform. No wonder native apps are so much better for the user and with recent developments in tooling they are as easy to work with as th eweb technologies
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.
  - msoad 9y ago
    We have seen how WebOS and FirefoxOS turned out. Wishing Google good luck with PWAs on slow devices. Having seen Inbox web app animations and memory usage I'm not holding my breath
    - awesomepeter 9y ago
      Did you actually use WebOS? I've had a great experience with the Palm Pre phones, way ahead of its time.
      - cmrdporcupine 9y ago
        I was a big WebOS advocate, and loved it very much. Owned 3 Pre series phones. But you do have to admit that UI latency on it was quite high compared to iOS. I mean, so was Android back then, but they improved it significantly.
        addicted 9y ago
        Exactly. Android had a native stack and it also had terrible performance. I don’t think it was any worse than WebOS’s. There’s good reason to blelieve that given enough time and even a fraction of resources that the Android team had WebOS would be able to significantly up their performance game (I say a fraction of resources because there is a lot of well funded open source development being done to improve web tech on mobile, through Chromium, WebKit and Firefox that would be leveraged).
    - fabrice_d 9y ago
      Open secret: FirefoxOS "failed" because it could not get a few super popular services in the targeted markets to write apps for it. It's very hard to break the chicken and egg issue without that support when bootstrapping a new mobile OS.
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        This is what I truly hope PWAs can solve. If they are 'good enough', they will bridge the gap for new platforms until they're popular enough for companies to develop for directly.
        eadmund 9y ago
        The problem is that a web app can never be good enough, because a web app can never be secure. I simply can't trust my private data to a PWA, because the developer can ship me malicious JavaScript at any time. With open source I can compile and audit code myself (or rely on others to do so for me); with an app store I can rely on a vendor to audit code; with a web app I have no assurance.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Google is a schizophrenic company. Just watch a few Google I/O tracks, and there is always the future of mobile apps is Android on the Android tracks, while the Chrome/Web tracks are pushing for the future of mobile apps is Web, with an occasional jab at native devs, as if on the room next door they weren't talking about native development. Then to make it even better, now we have Flutter as the third track. While PWAs are slowly being adopted by everyone else, Google is the company pushing them. They even have a Web Site just for PWAs, https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/, so yeah politics.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      Perhaps their product mismanagement style alone is enough of an indictment for Google to be broken up into smaller companies.
    - milesward 9y ago
      ...or there are just many different ways to solve for the massive variety of problems, and developers with a huge variety of backgrounds, and Google is trying to help them all? p.s. I am a Googler
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Which is understandable. What isn't so understandable is having a speech as if on the next door employees of the same company weren't exactly speaking the opposite. I don't understand how in stage A one can speak how glorious the future of native apps is going to be, while on Stage B we are hearing how web apps are going to win the war against native apps and PWA are the path to it.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > web on mobile has failed. This definitely isn't true. The web is very much alive and flourishing on mobile. Using web technologies for _everything_ on the phone however, is a mistake. That is not good.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I still remember how Symbian introduced the Web Runtime for web based mini-apps. Just today I had to kill Chrome on my device for the WebGL demo that was posted earlier. Yet it does OpenGL 3.x just without sweating.
- yesimahuman 9y ago
  That's not even remotely true. We are seeing significant, growing app development on the "hybrid" stack at Ionic, and strong interest in Progressive Web Apps.
  - msoad 9y ago
    How many of top 20 apps in App Store are web apps? I agree that web apps are faster to iterate but the user experience is guaranteed to be worse. I've worked on some of the web apps that are usually featured as "see web can do this". I'm not an outsider. I'm just observing how any app that is successful is either native already or they are making it native asap
    - yesimahuman 9y ago
      At the risk of sounding flippant, what the top 20 consumer apps in the app store use and what the rest of the market use are very different things, especially when factoring in the enterprise. I say that as someone building a business and making money from these customers. At any rate, we have a number of well know brand flagship apps built on Ionic, though they might not have usage patterns like Facebook/Snapchat. By far the most mobile development happening right now is outside of the well known consumer social app space.
  - metilda 9y ago
    Mainly due to the average consumer not being interested in installing an app for something like LetGo or OfferUp (Craigslist competitors). Even Facebook works well in a mobile browser, with push notifications even!
  - rimliu 9y ago
    It's like claming that open-space offices are superior because you see them everywhere.
  - mamcx 9y ago
    > growing app development on the "hybrid" stack at Ionic That is not the metric. Is fast-UI, not how many devs are lazy or don't know how do native. I invest more than 2 months researching the space this year (after several other times before), and seriously, only iOS is fast enough for html/webview. Android is SUPER slow. I mean, i get your ionic sample app and run it on my test device. I touch once... and wait a century (sarcasm) for it to respond..
- isaiahg 9y ago
  In my experience it doesn't matter what you use to make an app with as long as it fits the use case. I've seen great web apps and horrible ones. I've also seen great native apps and ones with horrible experiences equally. It's all a balance act of using the technology you know best and which covers your needs best.
l1ambda 9y ago
I'd like to see https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ ported to mobile phones and perhaps integrated with this or FirefoxOS somehow.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Do they have any mobile work in the Redox tree yet?
  - chc4 9y ago
    No, and they said several times that they had no plans for it (which might have changed, to be fair). Their roadmap was to target servers, which have a use for secure OS and sane driver requirements. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293436 is the only source I can find, but I'm sure I've seen it elsewhere)
jpalomaki 9y ago
Looks like the new HMD-Nokia "banana" is powered by KaiOS [1]. [1] https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-8110-4g https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-8110-4g
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Ugh...school wheel hijacking in the middle of the page ... still not has bad as the KaiOS page.
  - hollander 9y ago
    The horrors of modern webdesign... Looks over usability...
  - DiThi 9y ago
    Is it scroll wheel hijacking when the scroll itself works as intended (as configured by the user) but some part of the content "locks" to the viewport? I'd say it doesn't touch the wheel at all.
  - wired_devil 9y ago
    Also, that page gave me dizziness. Why that background colors? Jesus!
- abrowne 9y ago
  The KaiOS page also says they launched phones in 2017 with AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. It looks like this is T-Mo's: https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone/alcatel-go-flip https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone/alcatel-go-flip
- Yaggo 9y ago
  Out of topic, what's the purpose of physical numpad in a modern phone? Inputting text with T9? Pure nostalgy? Fill the void because bigger screen would be too expensive? I find it hard to believe that manual entering of phone numbers is common use case. Nowadays people mainly communicate by texting/chatting via social networks, right?
magicfractal 9y ago
Can I install it on a phone?
protomyth 9y ago
From the FAQ Can I develop apps for KaiOS? KaiOS is a curated platform for apps and we are working closely with app developers to provide the best experience for our users. At the moment we are not accepting submissions into the Store, but will do so in the future. If you are interested in developing apps for KaiOS in the future, leave your email in our developers section. We will notify you when of important product updates. You can also follow us on Twitter to stay up to date. I'm not sure if this is really a good way to get developers on board given the ease of starting and experimenting on iOS and Android.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Well, there is a point to be made, especially for Android, how poor the quality of the average app is and how they can often even be malicious. As a user, I for example much prefer the harsh controls that Linux distributions have in place. If it's in the repository, you can essentially be sure that it does not do anything that's not probably actually in your interest, and just as well that it is actually decent software, somehow useful to someone. Probably the best software in its class, available on the platform, too. Yeah, it also means that less is available on the platform. That maybe the highest quality software in a class is not always as high quality as in other distribution platforms, but for most jobs really, you don't need the non-plus-ultra, you need a tool that does the job and one of which you know that it does the job, without trying it out for hours or having to fight defaults that work against you. On Android, F-Droid sort of provides that, but it's still just a small island of decency glued on top of a system and ecosystem that lives off of user-hostile behaviour. If as a user you don't know of F-Droid, you're hardly going to find these decent apps in that sea of not-so-decent apps, which really discourages the creation of decent apps as well. With a curated platform, you could provide the user with trust in their platform (which might especially also be sellable to businesses) and you can keep the air free around those actually decent apps.
- beeflaw 9y ago
  It's a good way to not get developers on board. Yes, you can easily develop for iOS/Android and as a result the respective stores are drowned in crap. Merely publishing on there will give you zero visibility. On curated platforms, there's the benefit of being a big fish in a small pond.
djsumdog 9y ago
I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the devices it supports. PostmarketOS is just a way to turn an old phone into a Raspberry Pi type device, but maybe that's the first step in a truly unified mainline kernel for all mobile devices.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I really want PostMarketOS to succeed, for one because it would be really neat to have an open phone OS but also because I think it would cut down a lot on the number of phones that end up being demolished long before their actual life-span is at an end.
  - smt88 9y ago
    I have a 1st-gen Moto X that I use as a backup. It's about as responsive as my Pixel (i.e. not very responsive, not even close to iPhone) and it's a great size. The problem is, as always, the battery. If I could replace that and install PostMarket, I might use it as my daily driver.
    - 1011_1101 9y ago
      Couldn't find any numbers for battery life comparison between original and postmarketOS. Could you share your experience please? (Your last line seems to indicate there might be a significant increase)
      - smt88 9y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't clear. I haven't used Postmarket because no software can fix the battery issues with that phone. If I could easily swap out the battery and also install Postmarket, I would do both. As of now, I can't get a new battery and will therefore do neither.
danbolt 9y ago
Even if I had to tune for low-end hardware, I’d love to own and hack around on a simple device with this sort of OS.
Jhsto 9y ago
I'm on a high horse (I'm able to afford an iPhone), but what kind of problem does this solve? To me, it looks like Nokia now has Android, their own operating system, and this to upkeep. Does anyone else remember what happened when they last time partnered with an experimental mobile operating system? I think it was Microsoft last time. Would love to hear some reasoning from the folks from HMD about this.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Windows Phone is discontinued, but sure as heck wasn't experimental. I've used it flawlessly since about 2011 with rock-solid stability and battery life.
  - Jhsto 9y ago
    What I meant was that I don't follow why does Nokia rock the boat with their choices of operating systems. They already have their own software running on the likes of the renowned 3310, so why not spend the engineering time to extend that instead of risking another platform becoming discontinued? That's what I would want to hear more about.
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Ah, understood. I hope I didn't sound offended, just confused until I read your reply. I agree that it is similar to Google in that they seem to hedge their bets too much (like how Google has two OS, two languages...etc etc). I would really like a third popular OS...there are so many out there, but with no steam (this, firefoxOS, sailfish...)
- rootw0rm 9y ago
  I remember. There was excellent Nokia hardware and shit software. The only way to get access to proper APIs that the other 2 platforms had was to become a Microsoft partner. The blame for that debacle rests entirely with Microsoft. They had lots to say, but not an ounce of willpower to back it up.
shams93 9y ago
To me the mistake that was made with Firefox os was going after android instead of going after chromebooks. If firefox os had been designed to run on commodity x86 hardware like chromium os it would not have fallen so hard because a lot of people would be able to run it on an old laptop even if no one was making official hardware for it. Because these run html5 web apps the lack of appstore depth would have been a non-issue as well.
nkkollaw 9y ago
I don't know. I really liked Microsoft's phones, but there was no Google Maps, no Google Inbox, and bunch of other apps that I use daily were missing. Software is the problem for these OSes. The only way to be able to compete IMHO is to make it compatible with APKs, installable via a store. Otherwise, it's a nice effort but you'll never reach the adoption necessary to make it worth continuing working on the project.
- beeflaw 9y ago
  Remember all those feature phones with a plethora of custom operating systems? Almost none of the users cared (or knew) what the OS was. This is an OS for that kind of device. Nokia is shipping it right now.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    The target market might not care or know what the OS is, but they'll want to use software they're used to: Google Maps, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Tinder, Skype, games, etc. I'm just saying that whatever OS will be useless to a lot of people if it doesn't run what they want it to. One way to do that is to make it compatible with Android apps, which have already a version of virtually every major app.
    - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
      Are you sure you know the target market you're speaking of? They're not coming from Android world, so they're probably used to exactly the kind of services these phones support.
      - nkkollaw 9y ago
        No, not really. I'm just thinking about my mom--she doesn't know anything about phones or technology, but she'll ask right away if Whatsapp works. Also, in my original comment I was speaking more in general rather than about KaiOS alone.
cwyers 9y ago
Competing with the Android/iOS duopoly was a war of attrition the Microsoft, Firefox, Canonical and Samsung (Tizen) all lost. If you don't have the resources that those companies do I have a hard time seeing how you survive, and I have no interest in investing in a platform that has an extremely high risk of being orphaned. I wish it was otherwise - earlier today I was lamenting that my Samsung Galaxy S7 is laggier and less responsive than the $100 unlocked Lumia I bought myself years ago was. But I don't see another platform succeeding here.
- beeflaw 9y ago
  How do you define success? This is not a competitor to iOS/Android, it's for cheap low-end devices, which is still a sizable market. Try running Android on 256MB of RAM...
  - cwyers 9y ago
    Success: Enough market share to build a sustainable business so that it doesn't go away at some point. And I know about Android's problems there (and mentioned it). But Windows Phone and FirefoxOS both chased those markets and they're both basically gone now.
  - johndoe90 9y ago
    I still have a ZTE Open C with me. It has 512MB of RAM and 2-core CPU. It's been running on the Firefox OS quite slow. Having in mind a very poor functionality, I considered to switch to Android. When I installed Android, it was a total game changer. It was fast and smooth (back in 2014 of course, not now) and I never installed Firefox OS again.
  - thescriptkiddie 9y ago
    My first Android phone only had 192 MB of RAM.
    - beeflaw 9y ago
      Funny story, so did mine. It was a nightmare. That was almost a decade ago. If you want an experience as bad on modern Android, you need 512MB ram.
erikb 9y ago
It seems to offer less than the average Android or iOS? Why should I use it?
- beeflaw 9y ago
  If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. It's for people who buy a phone for its low price, who don't care what the OS is.
  - erikb 9y ago
    If I buy a phone for ~60 bucks there is already Android on it. If I don't care why would I even install another one?
    - beeflaw 9y ago
      End users aren't supposed to install KaiOS, vendors are supposed to ship handsets (like the new Nokia 1) with it preinstalled.
yosito 9y ago
This is definitely a promising OS. The fact that they have a maps app is extremely important. I think they'll also need a WhatsApp app to be truly competitive. They could use a few other mainstream messaging apps too. The mbasic Facebook messenger should work fine on this OS.
abrowne 9y ago
Nice: it looks like the system font — for the Alcatel Go Flip and Nokia 8110 4G at least — is Open Sans. I've been using Source Sans Pro for most things lately, but I did always like Open Sans.
tty7 9y ago
This website is terrible for providing information
squarefoot 9y ago
A chromatic nightmare paired with zero information, and that zero is stretched to fit a multi...thing I can't scroll properly. I sincerely hope whoever made that website isn't involved with the operating system. Please give us back the web made by people for people, not these abominations made by designers for investors.
Eridrus 9y ago
It seems like folks aren't aware that KaiOS is that runs on the JioPhone, a super cheap & popular feature phone in India, bundled with a super cheap data plan: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/jiophone-deliveries-likely-to-start-over-weekend/articleshow/60783048.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/jiophone-... To get some sense for the importance of this phone, this is the only feature phone you can get the Google Assistant on: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-assistant-coming-feature-phones-starting-indias-jiophone-820110/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-assistant-coming-fea...
mrtweetyhack 9y ago
"KaiOS gives smartphone powers to light and affordable devices"
sandov 9y ago
I couldn't find a link to the source code. Then I found this: >KaiOS is based on the Firefox OS open-source project and we are committed to abide by the rules of the applicable open source licenses. Therefore, we’ll make the source code available to the extent required by the applicable open source licenses. Haha. Good luck with your OS. Next.
garganshum 9y ago
I have actually developed for this platform. KaiOS powers Jio Phone and Reliance JIO is by far their largest customer (and also an investor from what I know). The thing I like about this platform is that it runs most web technologies. You can thank Firefox OS for that. We used React ecosystem to develop apps for KaiOS and they worked well enough. Jio Phone ships with Video and Audio streaming apps which are all built on either React or Angular and use HTML5. I think all of that was possible on Firefox OS as well and they haven't really changed anything substantially. We were given links to archived FirefoxOS documentation pages when we asked for documentation. They have managed to package FirefoxOS for enterprise customers. From what I know the KaiOS team comprises of people who worked on parts of Firefox OS (but not the core FirefoxOS team). This makes me wonder why FirefoxOS shut down and why did it not try to market itself like KaiOS has managed to do.
- toyg 9y ago
  > why did it not try to market itself like KaiOS has managed to do. Speculating, but it's easy to see how Mozilla going after enterprise customers would have attracted a lot of bad press. FFOS was already carrying enough bad mojo, attaching "enterprise" to it would have been even worse. For good or ill, Mozilla is supposed to be different from other corporations, at least in theory.
- techaddict009 9y ago
  So do they have app store like android? Where anyone can make KaiOS Apps and upload it?
  - fixmycode 9y ago
    From their FAQ: "KaiOS is a curated platform for apps and we are working closely with app developers to provide the best experience for our users. At the moment we are not accepting submissions into the Store, but will do so in the future."
- randomerr 9y ago
  I think it was combination of factors that shut down FireFox OS: * The foundation was bleeding money and had to limit it's focus * The Matchstick on KickStarter made FireFox OS look like a non-viable product * Not a lot of chimerical interest outside from outside the community
gsnedders 9y ago
What version of Gecko is it based on, and what's the story with security patches from upstream?
JD557 9y ago
From the website, it appears that all apps are written in HTML5+CSS+JS, however they target feature phones with 256MB of RAM and claim to have a long battery life. Considering how much resources some electron apps need and how battery hungry they are, what's the "secret" here? Is it a subset of HTML? Is Firefox that much more efficient than Chromium?
- hacker_9 9y ago
  Electron isn't a good benchmark here because every app spawns it's own Chrome renderer process. In the case of Kai, I'd imagine they'd only need to spawn a single instance, and just add/remove view handles as needed.
jc_denton 9y ago
> KaiOS is so light that it can run on phones with only 256MB of memory lol. That is not "light" And that website has the most embarassing "tech specs" section I have ever seen. What kind of kernel is it? They don't even say that. If it really is based off of firefox OS, while parts of that are MPL licensed, it uses the linux kernel which is GNU and therefore is definitely meant to have that part of its source available. So where is it?
chicob 9y ago
I hope "discoverability" doesn't mean "easily trackable".

290 points by fstephany 9y ago

di1eep 9y ago

This is actually based off the Mozilla project - 'boot to gecko'

abrowne 9y ago
... more well known as Firefox OS.

msoad 9y ago

Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and architectures firm multiple parties that don't specially care about your platform. No wonder native apps are so much better for the user and with recent developments in tooling they are as easy to work with as th eweb technologies

fabrice_d 9y ago
That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.
- msoad 9y ago
  We have seen how WebOS and FirefoxOS turned out. Wishing Google good luck with PWAs on slow devices. Having seen Inbox web app animations and memory usage I'm not holding my breath
  - awesomepeter 9y ago
    Did you actually use WebOS? I've had a great experience with the Palm Pre phones, way ahead of its time.
    - cmrdporcupine 9y ago
      I was a big WebOS advocate, and loved it very much. Owned 3 Pre series phones. But you do have to admit that UI latency on it was quite high compared to iOS. I mean, so was Android back then, but they improved it significantly.
      - addicted 9y ago
        Exactly. Android had a native stack and it also had terrible performance. I don’t think it was any worse than WebOS’s. There’s good reason to blelieve that given enough time and even a fraction of resources that the Android team had WebOS would be able to significantly up their performance game (I say a fraction of resources because there is a lot of well funded open source development being done to improve web tech on mobile, through Chromium, WebKit and Firefox that would be leveraged).
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    Open secret: FirefoxOS "failed" because it could not get a few super popular services in the targeted markets to write apps for it. It's very hard to break the chicken and egg issue without that support when bootstrapping a new mobile OS.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      This is what I truly hope PWAs can solve. If they are 'good enough', they will bridge the gap for new platforms until they're popular enough for companies to develop for directly.
      - eadmund 9y ago
        The problem is that a web app can never be good enough, because a web app can never be secure. I simply can't trust my private data to a PWA, because the developer can ship me malicious JavaScript at any time. With open source I can compile and audit code myself (or rely on others to do so for me); with an app store I can rely on a vendor to audit code; with a web app I have no assurance.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Google is a schizophrenic company. Just watch a few Google I/O tracks, and there is always the future of mobile apps is Android on the Android tracks, while the Chrome/Web tracks are pushing for the future of mobile apps is Web, with an occasional jab at native devs, as if on the room next door they weren't talking about native development. Then to make it even better, now we have Flutter as the third track. While PWAs are slowly being adopted by everyone else, Google is the company pushing them. They even have a Web Site just for PWAs, https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/, so yeah politics.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    Perhaps their product mismanagement style alone is enough of an indictment for Google to be broken up into smaller companies.
  - milesward 9y ago
    ...or there are just many different ways to solve for the massive variety of problems, and developers with a huge variety of backgrounds, and Google is trying to help them all? p.s. I am a Googler
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Which is understandable. What isn't so understandable is having a speech as if on the next door employees of the same company weren't exactly speaking the opposite. I don't understand how in stage A one can speak how glorious the future of native apps is going to be, while on Stage B we are hearing how web apps are going to win the war against native apps and PWA are the path to it.
madeofpalk 9y ago
> web on mobile has failed. This definitely isn't true. The web is very much alive and flourishing on mobile. Using web technologies for _everything_ on the phone however, is a mistake. That is not good.
pjmlp 9y ago
I still remember how Symbian introduced the Web Runtime for web based mini-apps. Just today I had to kill Chrome on my device for the WebGL demo that was posted earlier. Yet it does OpenGL 3.x just without sweating.
yesimahuman 9y ago
That's not even remotely true. We are seeing significant, growing app development on the "hybrid" stack at Ionic, and strong interest in Progressive Web Apps.
- msoad 9y ago
  How many of top 20 apps in App Store are web apps? I agree that web apps are faster to iterate but the user experience is guaranteed to be worse. I've worked on some of the web apps that are usually featured as "see web can do this". I'm not an outsider. I'm just observing how any app that is successful is either native already or they are making it native asap
  - yesimahuman 9y ago
    At the risk of sounding flippant, what the top 20 consumer apps in the app store use and what the rest of the market use are very different things, especially when factoring in the enterprise. I say that as someone building a business and making money from these customers. At any rate, we have a number of well know brand flagship apps built on Ionic, though they might not have usage patterns like Facebook/Snapchat. By far the most mobile development happening right now is outside of the well known consumer social app space.
- metilda 9y ago
  Mainly due to the average consumer not being interested in installing an app for something like LetGo or OfferUp (Craigslist competitors). Even Facebook works well in a mobile browser, with push notifications even!
- rimliu 9y ago
  It's like claming that open-space offices are superior because you see them everywhere.
- mamcx 9y ago
  > growing app development on the "hybrid" stack at Ionic That is not the metric. Is fast-UI, not how many devs are lazy or don't know how do native. I invest more than 2 months researching the space this year (after several other times before), and seriously, only iOS is fast enough for html/webview. Android is SUPER slow. I mean, i get your ionic sample app and run it on my test device. I touch once... and wait a century (sarcasm) for it to respond..
isaiahg 9y ago
In my experience it doesn't matter what you use to make an app with as long as it fits the use case. I've seen great web apps and horrible ones. I've also seen great native apps and ones with horrible experiences equally. It's all a balance act of using the technology you know best and which covers your needs best.

l1ambda 9y ago

I'd like to see https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ ported to mobile phones and perhaps integrated with this or FirefoxOS somehow.

djsumdog 9y ago
Do they have any mobile work in the Redox tree yet?
- chc4 9y ago
  No, and they said several times that they had no plans for it (which might have changed, to be fair). Their roadmap was to target servers, which have a use for secure OS and sane driver requirements. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293436 is the only source I can find, but I'm sure I've seen it elsewhere)

jpalomaki 9y ago

Looks like the new HMD-Nokia "banana" is powered by KaiOS [1]. [1] https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-8110-4g https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-8110-4g

djsumdog 9y ago
Ugh...school wheel hijacking in the middle of the page ... still not has bad as the KaiOS page.
- hollander 9y ago
  The horrors of modern webdesign... Looks over usability...
- DiThi 9y ago
  Is it scroll wheel hijacking when the scroll itself works as intended (as configured by the user) but some part of the content "locks" to the viewport? I'd say it doesn't touch the wheel at all.
- wired_devil 9y ago
  Also, that page gave me dizziness. Why that background colors? Jesus!
abrowne 9y ago
The KaiOS page also says they launched phones in 2017 with AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. It looks like this is T-Mo's: https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone/alcatel-go-flip https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone/alcatel-go-flip
Yaggo 9y ago
Out of topic, what's the purpose of physical numpad in a modern phone? Inputting text with T9? Pure nostalgy? Fill the void because bigger screen would be too expensive? I find it hard to believe that manual entering of phone numbers is common use case. Nowadays people mainly communicate by texting/chatting via social networks, right?

magicfractal 9y ago

Can I install it on a phone?

protomyth 9y ago

From the FAQ Can I develop apps for KaiOS? KaiOS is a curated platform for apps and we are working closely with app developers to provide the best experience for our users. At the moment we are not accepting submissions into the Store, but will do so in the future. If you are interested in developing apps for KaiOS in the future, leave your email in our developers section. We will notify you when of important product updates. You can also follow us on Twitter to stay up to date. I'm not sure if this is really a good way to get developers on board given the ease of starting and experimenting on iOS and Android.

Sylos 9y ago
Well, there is a point to be made, especially for Android, how poor the quality of the average app is and how they can often even be malicious. As a user, I for example much prefer the harsh controls that Linux distributions have in place. If it's in the repository, you can essentially be sure that it does not do anything that's not probably actually in your interest, and just as well that it is actually decent software, somehow useful to someone. Probably the best software in its class, available on the platform, too. Yeah, it also means that less is available on the platform. That maybe the highest quality software in a class is not always as high quality as in other distribution platforms, but for most jobs really, you don't need the non-plus-ultra, you need a tool that does the job and one of which you know that it does the job, without trying it out for hours or having to fight defaults that work against you. On Android, F-Droid sort of provides that, but it's still just a small island of decency glued on top of a system and ecosystem that lives off of user-hostile behaviour. If as a user you don't know of F-Droid, you're hardly going to find these decent apps in that sea of not-so-decent apps, which really discourages the creation of decent apps as well. With a curated platform, you could provide the user with trust in their platform (which might especially also be sellable to businesses) and you can keep the air free around those actually decent apps.
beeflaw 9y ago
It's a good way to not get developers on board. Yes, you can easily develop for iOS/Android and as a result the respective stores are drowned in crap. Merely publishing on there will give you zero visibility. On curated platforms, there's the benefit of being a big fish in a small pond.

djsumdog 9y ago

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the devices it supports. PostmarketOS is just a way to turn an old phone into a Raspberry Pi type device, but maybe that's the first step in a truly unified mainline kernel for all mobile devices.

jacquesm 9y ago
I really want PostMarketOS to succeed, for one because it would be really neat to have an open phone OS but also because I think it would cut down a lot on the number of phones that end up being demolished long before their actual life-span is at an end.
- smt88 9y ago
  I have a 1st-gen Moto X that I use as a backup. It's about as responsive as my Pixel (i.e. not very responsive, not even close to iPhone) and it's a great size. The problem is, as always, the battery. If I could replace that and install PostMarket, I might use it as my daily driver.
  - 1011_1101 9y ago
    Couldn't find any numbers for battery life comparison between original and postmarketOS. Could you share your experience please? (Your last line seems to indicate there might be a significant increase)
    - smt88 9y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't clear. I haven't used Postmarket because no software can fix the battery issues with that phone. If I could easily swap out the battery and also install Postmarket, I would do both. As of now, I can't get a new battery and will therefore do neither.

danbolt 9y ago

Even if I had to tune for low-end hardware, I’d love to own and hack around on a simple device with this sort of OS.

Jhsto 9y ago

I'm on a high horse (I'm able to afford an iPhone), but what kind of problem does this solve? To me, it looks like Nokia now has Android, their own operating system, and this to upkeep. Does anyone else remember what happened when they last time partnered with an experimental mobile operating system? I think it was Microsoft last time. Would love to hear some reasoning from the folks from HMD about this.

throwaway7645 9y ago
Windows Phone is discontinued, but sure as heck wasn't experimental. I've used it flawlessly since about 2011 with rock-solid stability and battery life.
- Jhsto 9y ago
  What I meant was that I don't follow why does Nokia rock the boat with their choices of operating systems. They already have their own software running on the likes of the renowned 3310, so why not spend the engineering time to extend that instead of risking another platform becoming discontinued? That's what I would want to hear more about.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Ah, understood. I hope I didn't sound offended, just confused until I read your reply. I agree that it is similar to Google in that they seem to hedge their bets too much (like how Google has two OS, two languages...etc etc). I would really like a third popular OS...there are so many out there, but with no steam (this, firefoxOS, sailfish...)
rootw0rm 9y ago
I remember. There was excellent Nokia hardware and shit software. The only way to get access to proper APIs that the other 2 platforms had was to become a Microsoft partner. The blame for that debacle rests entirely with Microsoft. They had lots to say, but not an ounce of willpower to back it up.

shams93 9y ago

To me the mistake that was made with Firefox os was going after android instead of going after chromebooks. If firefox os had been designed to run on commodity x86 hardware like chromium os it would not have fallen so hard because a lot of people would be able to run it on an old laptop even if no one was making official hardware for it. Because these run html5 web apps the lack of appstore depth would have been a non-issue as well.

nkkollaw 9y ago

I don't know. I really liked Microsoft's phones, but there was no Google Maps, no Google Inbox, and bunch of other apps that I use daily were missing. Software is the problem for these OSes. The only way to be able to compete IMHO is to make it compatible with APKs, installable via a store. Otherwise, it's a nice effort but you'll never reach the adoption necessary to make it worth continuing working on the project.

beeflaw 9y ago
Remember all those feature phones with a plethora of custom operating systems? Almost none of the users cared (or knew) what the OS was. This is an OS for that kind of device. Nokia is shipping it right now.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  The target market might not care or know what the OS is, but they'll want to use software they're used to: Google Maps, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Tinder, Skype, games, etc. I'm just saying that whatever OS will be useless to a lot of people if it doesn't run what they want it to. One way to do that is to make it compatible with Android apps, which have already a version of virtually every major app.
  - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
    Are you sure you know the target market you're speaking of? They're not coming from Android world, so they're probably used to exactly the kind of services these phones support.
    - nkkollaw 9y ago
      No, not really. I'm just thinking about my mom--she doesn't know anything about phones or technology, but she'll ask right away if Whatsapp works. Also, in my original comment I was speaking more in general rather than about KaiOS alone.

cwyers 9y ago

Competing with the Android/iOS duopoly was a war of attrition the Microsoft, Firefox, Canonical and Samsung (Tizen) all lost. If you don't have the resources that those companies do I have a hard time seeing how you survive, and I have no interest in investing in a platform that has an extremely high risk of being orphaned. I wish it was otherwise - earlier today I was lamenting that my Samsung Galaxy S7 is laggier and less responsive than the $100 unlocked Lumia I bought myself years ago was. But I don't see another platform succeeding here.

beeflaw 9y ago
How do you define success? This is not a competitor to iOS/Android, it's for cheap low-end devices, which is still a sizable market. Try running Android on 256MB of RAM...
- cwyers 9y ago
  Success: Enough market share to build a sustainable business so that it doesn't go away at some point. And I know about Android's problems there (and mentioned it). But Windows Phone and FirefoxOS both chased those markets and they're both basically gone now.
- johndoe90 9y ago
  I still have a ZTE Open C with me. It has 512MB of RAM and 2-core CPU. It's been running on the Firefox OS quite slow. Having in mind a very poor functionality, I considered to switch to Android. When I installed Android, it was a total game changer. It was fast and smooth (back in 2014 of course, not now) and I never installed Firefox OS again.
- thescriptkiddie 9y ago
  My first Android phone only had 192 MB of RAM.
  - beeflaw 9y ago
    Funny story, so did mine. It was a nightmare. That was almost a decade ago. If you want an experience as bad on modern Android, you need 512MB ram.

erikb 9y ago

It seems to offer less than the average Android or iOS? Why should I use it?

beeflaw 9y ago
If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. It's for people who buy a phone for its low price, who don't care what the OS is.
- erikb 9y ago
  If I buy a phone for ~60 bucks there is already Android on it. If I don't care why would I even install another one?
  - beeflaw 9y ago
    End users aren't supposed to install KaiOS, vendors are supposed to ship handsets (like the new Nokia 1) with it preinstalled.

yosito 9y ago

This is definitely a promising OS. The fact that they have a maps app is extremely important. I think they'll also need a WhatsApp app to be truly competitive. They could use a few other mainstream messaging apps too. The mbasic Facebook messenger should work fine on this OS.

abrowne 9y ago

Nice: it looks like the system font — for the Alcatel Go Flip and Nokia 8110 4G at least — is Open Sans. I've been using Source Sans Pro for most things lately, but I did always like Open Sans.

tty7 9y ago

This website is terrible for providing information

squarefoot 9y ago

A chromatic nightmare paired with zero information, and that zero is stretched to fit a multi...thing I can't scroll properly. I sincerely hope whoever made that website isn't involved with the operating system. Please give us back the web made by people for people, not these abominations made by designers for investors.

Eridrus 9y ago

It seems like folks aren't aware that KaiOS is that runs on the JioPhone, a super cheap & popular feature phone in India, bundled with a super cheap data plan: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/jiophone-deliveries-likely-to-start-over-weekend/articleshow/60783048.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/jiophone-... To get some sense for the importance of this phone, this is the only feature phone you can get the Google Assistant on: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-assistant-coming-feature-phones-starting-indias-jiophone-820110/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-assistant-coming-fea...

mrtweetyhack 9y ago

"KaiOS gives smartphone powers to light and affordable devices"

sandov 9y ago

I couldn't find a link to the source code. Then I found this: >KaiOS is based on the Firefox OS open-source project and we are committed to abide by the rules of the applicable open source licenses. Therefore, we’ll make the source code available to the extent required by the applicable open source licenses. Haha. Good luck with your OS. Next.

garganshum 9y ago

I have actually developed for this platform. KaiOS powers Jio Phone and Reliance JIO is by far their largest customer (and also an investor from what I know). The thing I like about this platform is that it runs most web technologies. You can thank Firefox OS for that. We used React ecosystem to develop apps for KaiOS and they worked well enough. Jio Phone ships with Video and Audio streaming apps which are all built on either React or Angular and use HTML5. I think all of that was possible on Firefox OS as well and they haven't really changed anything substantially. We were given links to archived FirefoxOS documentation pages when we asked for documentation. They have managed to package FirefoxOS for enterprise customers. From what I know the KaiOS team comprises of people who worked on parts of Firefox OS (but not the core FirefoxOS team). This makes me wonder why FirefoxOS shut down and why did it not try to market itself like KaiOS has managed to do.

toyg 9y ago
> why did it not try to market itself like KaiOS has managed to do. Speculating, but it's easy to see how Mozilla going after enterprise customers would have attracted a lot of bad press. FFOS was already carrying enough bad mojo, attaching "enterprise" to it would have been even worse. For good or ill, Mozilla is supposed to be different from other corporations, at least in theory.
techaddict009 9y ago
So do they have app store like android? Where anyone can make KaiOS Apps and upload it?
- fixmycode 9y ago
  From their FAQ: "KaiOS is a curated platform for apps and we are working closely with app developers to provide the best experience for our users. At the moment we are not accepting submissions into the Store, but will do so in the future."
randomerr 9y ago
I think it was combination of factors that shut down FireFox OS: * The foundation was bleeding money and had to limit it's focus * The Matchstick on KickStarter made FireFox OS look like a non-viable product * Not a lot of chimerical interest outside from outside the community

gsnedders 9y ago

What version of Gecko is it based on, and what's the story with security patches from upstream?

JD557 9y ago

From the website, it appears that all apps are written in HTML5+CSS+JS, however they target feature phones with 256MB of RAM and claim to have a long battery life. Considering how much resources some electron apps need and how battery hungry they are, what's the "secret" here? Is it a subset of HTML? Is Firefox that much more efficient than Chromium?

hacker_9 9y ago
Electron isn't a good benchmark here because every app spawns it's own Chrome renderer process. In the case of Kai, I'd imagine they'd only need to spawn a single instance, and just add/remove view handles as needed.

jc_denton 9y ago

> KaiOS is so light that it can run on phones with only 256MB of memory lol. That is not "light" And that website has the most embarassing "tech specs" section I have ever seen. What kind of kernel is it? They don't even say that. If it really is based off of firefox OS, while parts of that are MPL licensed, it uses the linux kernel which is GNU and therefore is definitely meant to have that part of its source available. So where is it?

chicob 9y ago

I hope "discoverability" doesn't mean "easily trackable".