3 ms·

FirefoxOS was too ahead of its time. Robust in idea, lacking in proper marketing and objective understanding. Now we've got direct USB to browser capabilities

FirefoxOS was too ahead of its time. Robust in idea, lacking in proper marketing and objective understanding. Now we've got direct USB to browser capabilities and no web first OS. Backwards but true. For those not aware: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS

nologic01 3y ago
> FirefoxOS was too ahead of its time I think it was just-in-time but competing against incredible odds. It was perfectly usable as a first step (I had a cheap ZTE phone [1]) but it came out as the craze for ever more powerful mobiles for taking selfies and sliding down media on social media was reaching feverish levels. I think of the intervening decade as a lost decade. Imagine if the project did not fold and had iterated this entire time... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open
- pyr0hu 3y ago
  I won a dev phone on a competition near my uni (the competition was who will be the fastest to create a simple app for FFOS and I just created a simple html page with a hello world in <p> tags lol), some ZTE one I think. Developed a few games just for myself, it was a fun tech tbh, but the phone was pretty unstable so after a time it just collected dust on my shelf and I sold it to someone.
  - pyr0hu 3y ago
    ps.: it was this one not a ZTE: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-developer-preview-phone/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-...
puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
FirefoxOS sort of lives on through the KaiOS fork, unfortunately many devices come locked which prevents from installing homebrew apps. I have a rooted Nokia 2720 Flip, and while the hardware is abysmal (KaiOS is targeted at emerging markets) you can get quite a bit of functionality out of it (including openstreetmap, podcast/music players, rss readers, google-authenticator-compatible TOTP etc).

nologic01 3y ago

> FirefoxOS was too ahead of its time I think it was just-in-time but competing against incredible odds. It was perfectly usable as a first step (I had a cheap ZTE phone [1]) but it came out as the craze for ever more powerful mobiles for taking selfies and sliding down media on social media was reaching feverish levels. I think of the intervening decade as a lost decade. Imagine if the project did not fold and had iterated this entire time... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open

pyr0hu 3y ago
I won a dev phone on a competition near my uni (the competition was who will be the fastest to create a simple app for FFOS and I just created a simple html page with a hello world in <p> tags lol), some ZTE one I think. Developed a few games just for myself, it was a fun tech tbh, but the phone was pretty unstable so after a time it just collected dust on my shelf and I sold it to someone.
- pyr0hu 3y ago
  ps.: it was this one not a ZTE: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-developer-preview-phone/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-...

puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago

FirefoxOS sort of lives on through the KaiOS fork, unfortunately many devices come locked which prevents from installing homebrew apps. I have a rooted Nokia 2720 Flip, and while the hardware is abysmal (KaiOS is targeted at emerging markets) you can get quite a bit of functionality out of it (including openstreetmap, podcast/music players, rss readers, google-authenticator-compatible TOTP etc).