4 ms·

except this analysis don't survive the real world. living in California and contributing code to gaia, i could only have a dev phone (not being involved with m

except this analysis don't survive the real world. living in California and contributing code to gaia, i could only have a dev phone (not being involved with moz) when i went to an alley in Mexico city known for selling black market (no tax) computers. there i could finally pay usd50 to buy the crumiest bright orange plastic phone to use for dev work. would i have spent usd200-500 on my hobby to get a good phone months before i had a trip to mexico city? probably. would i pay the usd300 retailers in the us were charging for the crummiest low end phone? hell no.

roywashere 1y ago
It’s a balance. I guess they needed to target low end because they were 4 years too late. If they did this around the time of Android 1.5 or even 4, those phones were not so expensive and they could have targeted that or similar hardware. I guess around 2012 I bought a Firefox OS phone from a Spanish company for I believe 150 euros, which was quite reasonable. FirefoxOS was unusable though. Plus it lacked WhatsApp so I could not use it as a daily driver. In 2025 I would also need to have a banking app on mobile so it’s impossible to use an “alternative” phone OS for me