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Firefox OS is available on phones today, just rebranded as KaiOS. I have a Nokia 6300 4G, it works fine for what I want: A small dual SIM phone with good call

by rjsw 1y ago

Firefox OS is available on phones today, just rebranded as KaiOS. I have a Nokia 6300 4G, it works fine for what I want: A small dual SIM phone with good call quality and a 4G router when away from home. Any apps are a bonus though Meta recently withdrew the WhatsApp one.

mdaniel 1y ago
heh https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g says > This branch is 400945 commits ahead of, 15894 commits behind mozilla-b2g/gecko-b2g:b2g48_v2_6 and it seems they're still using bugzilla, so they're obviously hard-core Here are the list of their 74 supported devices https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/devices/ https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/devices/
bandoti 1y ago
Nice I would like to explore KaiOS more. I have been thinking these days: what is the bare minimum people need today in a mobile digital experience. Browser, phone, email/contacts, maps, payment, authentication, file manager, networking (NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular). Seems like with the progression of web APIs and WASM, most of this functionality can live in the browser.
- owebmaster 1y ago
  What I know is that nowadays, having less apps is a feature. A lot of people would buy a phone that does not have TikTok and Instagram
- Aeglaecia 1y ago
  kaios is disappointing , feature poor , and buggy - dumb phones running it are mere echoes of their predecessors
- qingcharles 1y ago
  I see and use these devices when I help newly released parolees, who are sometimes prohibited from having any apps while on parole, and these are the "dumbest" phones you can currently buy. They're honestly pretty horrible. Everything is just so much effort on them. Nothing makes sense. And I'm no dummy. I worked for Nokia for a while on prototypes in the mid-2000s, which is the kind of era these Kai phones hark back to.
mort96 1y ago
KaiOS is closed source though. That makes it completely uninteresting; the exciting part of Firefox OS wasn't just "yay more HTML and CSS".
- lproven 1y ago
  It is, which is interesting because it's a fork of B2G which is explicitly FOSS under a licence written by former CEO Mitch Baker herself. How can a FOSS project based around Linux and Firefox be picked up and closed? That ought to be impossible -- this isn't BSD-licensed stuff.
  - fabrice_d 1y ago
    Gecko is MPL licensed, and KaiOS abides by that license. The front-end part of FxOS was always under an Apache 2 license, much to the dismay of some employees, but that was forced by commercial partners to allow them to differentiate while keeping their changes private.
gaazoh 1y ago
I tried using a Nokia 6300 4G for a while a few years ago, because I don't use phones for much else than phone, SMS and a bit of Wikipedia. I had a terrible experience, nothing worked correctly, basic, fundamental apps such as phone, contact, alarms, had lag spikes of over a second for any action and randomly crashed, it had no CJK support (kind of a big deal for me, and like 20% of the world)... Some apps worked remarkably well, but having Youtube work better than messages is kind of pointless given the sVGA screen size. And the app ecosystem was basically dead. I tried developing a bit for it (apps are a simple html+css+js package), but at the time publishing to their app store required integration of their advertising solution, which absolutely sucked (in 6 month of use, I was never served any other ad than "hot MILFs in my area"), which meant that neither commercial nor OSS apps would target the platfom. IIRC side-loading sort-of worked depending on phones, which means it doesn't work for the average user. Oh and sometimes the Kai Store app would send advertisement through push notifications. I loved KaiOS on paper, but using it was a chore. A 2010-era "dumb" phone could do most of what a KaiOS phone can, but better, except for connecting to 3g/4g networks, and older networks are deprecated in many regions, which means they're not an option anymore. Maybe they got better over time, but what a huge disappointment that was.

by rjsw 1y ago

mdaniel 1y ago

heh https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g says > This branch is 400945 commits ahead of, 15894 commits behind mozilla-b2g/gecko-b2g:b2g48_v2_6 and it seems they're still using bugzilla, so they're obviously hard-core Here are the list of their 74 supported devices https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/devices/ https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/devices/

bandoti 1y ago

Nice I would like to explore KaiOS more. I have been thinking these days: what is the bare minimum people need today in a mobile digital experience. Browser, phone, email/contacts, maps, payment, authentication, file manager, networking (NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular). Seems like with the progression of web APIs and WASM, most of this functionality can live in the browser.

owebmaster 1y ago
What I know is that nowadays, having less apps is a feature. A lot of people would buy a phone that does not have TikTok and Instagram
Aeglaecia 1y ago
kaios is disappointing , feature poor , and buggy - dumb phones running it are mere echoes of their predecessors
qingcharles 1y ago
I see and use these devices when I help newly released parolees, who are sometimes prohibited from having any apps while on parole, and these are the "dumbest" phones you can currently buy. They're honestly pretty horrible. Everything is just so much effort on them. Nothing makes sense. And I'm no dummy. I worked for Nokia for a while on prototypes in the mid-2000s, which is the kind of era these Kai phones hark back to.

mort96 1y ago

KaiOS is closed source though. That makes it completely uninteresting; the exciting part of Firefox OS wasn't just "yay more HTML and CSS".

lproven 1y ago
It is, which is interesting because it's a fork of B2G which is explicitly FOSS under a licence written by former CEO Mitch Baker herself. How can a FOSS project based around Linux and Firefox be picked up and closed? That ought to be impossible -- this isn't BSD-licensed stuff.
- fabrice_d 1y ago
  Gecko is MPL licensed, and KaiOS abides by that license. The front-end part of FxOS was always under an Apache 2 license, much to the dismay of some employees, but that was forced by commercial partners to allow them to differentiate while keeping their changes private.

gaazoh 1y ago

I tried using a Nokia 6300 4G for a while a few years ago, because I don't use phones for much else than phone, SMS and a bit of Wikipedia. I had a terrible experience, nothing worked correctly, basic, fundamental apps such as phone, contact, alarms, had lag spikes of over a second for any action and randomly crashed, it had no CJK support (kind of a big deal for me, and like 20% of the world)... Some apps worked remarkably well, but having Youtube work better than messages is kind of pointless given the sVGA screen size. And the app ecosystem was basically dead. I tried developing a bit for it (apps are a simple html+css+js package), but at the time publishing to their app store required integration of their advertising solution, which absolutely sucked (in 6 month of use, I was never served any other ad than "hot MILFs in my area"), which meant that neither commercial nor OSS apps would target the platfom. IIRC side-loading sort-of worked depending on phones, which means it doesn't work for the average user. Oh and sometimes the Kai Store app would send advertisement through push notifications. I loved KaiOS on paper, but using it was a chore. A 2010-era "dumb" phone could do most of what a KaiOS phone can, but better, except for connecting to 3g/4g networks, and older networks are deprecated in many regions, which means they're not an option anymore. Maybe they got better over time, but what a huge disappointment that was.