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Firefox OS Developer Preview Devices Announced
- hosay123 14y agoDamnit Mozilla, I want a web based mobile platform to succeed so badly and you're the company for it, but you keep killing your own fire with these repeated false starts. A 600 word blog post to announce the availability of a holding page? My credit card is burning a hole in my pocket! The approximate specs for the lowest end device were available on the B2G wiki for months. Looking forward to holding this in my hand. For a few cents per unit, they might have made it even more compelling by adding dual SIM slots, certainly Chinese vendors seem to be able to manage this on <$100 Android handsets.
- adamkochanowicz 14y agoThe developer preview is an actual phone, not a webpage.
- notatoad 14y agoCurrently it's just a webpage, because you can't actually buy the developer preview phone yet. It will be a phone, but it isn't yet.
- dbcooper 14y agoLooks like it is an ARM v7 CPU in the cheaper device (ARM v6 S1 SOC CPU cores don't go up to 1GHz), which is good to see as the baseline.
- mtgx 14y agoIt looks like the single Scorpion core that was in the Nexus One, based on ARMv7 and a competitor to Cortex A8.
- astro1138 14y agoI still use a Nexus One class (HTC Desire) which seems to have specs that are on par. I want Firefox OS but why would I buy another device with the same functionality?
- ryanpetrich 14y agoThe Keon: CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 1Ghz. UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA). GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE). Screen 3.5" HVGA Multitouch. Camera 3 MP. 4 GB (ROM) and 512 (RAM). MicroSD, Wifi N, Light & Prox. Sensor, G-Sensor, GPS, MicroUSB. Battery 1580 mAh. The Peak: CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.2Ghz x2. UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA). GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE). Screen 4.3" qHD IPS Multitouch. Camera 8 MP (back) + 2 MP (front). 4 GB (ROM) and 512 (RAM). MicroSD, Wifi N, Light & Prox. Sensor, G-Sensor, GPS, MicroUSB, Flash (camera). Battery 1800 mAh.
- metabrew 14y agoNo buy link, what a wasted announcement. They unveiled... a holding page.
- narag 14y agoNot that I think it's a good practice, but the fact is a lot of companies announce products with great fanfar before they're actually available. Right now there's a press conference where they're talking about the phones. There's a Twiter tag: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23geeksphone&src=hash https://twitter.com/search?q=%23geeksphone&src=hash Since Geeksphone is in Madrid, twenty minutes from my home, I hope I can just walk in and buy one as soon as they're for sale.
- ksec 14y agoThey should have at least had a a announcement mailing list for me to enter.... While i am a Mozilla Fans, i hate to admit it is just not a well run company.
- azakai 14y agoThis website is made by geeksphone, which Wikipedia says is a Spanish startup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeeksPhone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeeksPhone
- zabraxias 14y agoThe parts that matter are quite well run but the marketing side of things could apparently use some polish. For what it's worth this is simply a dev phone announcement and not meant to be a consumer device announcement. I am quite excited for this not because FxOS will take over android/iOS but because it will give people a trusted organization behind their private data. This has less impact on the North American market but more in other countries that tend to value privacy.
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- nicpottier 14y agoI loaded up Firefox OS on a Nexus S a few months back and the performance was really really poor compared to Android 4 running on the same hardware. Their low end device looks similarly specced, so I'm a bit worried about how it will come off. Haven't gone through loading up the latest builds so perhaps performance has improved a lot. Before Android 4.* (especially 4.1 and Butter) I think there was room for another competitor in the market, but I'm having a hard time believing FirefoxOS is going to be able to make significant inroads. Android has finally grown up and contract-free low end phones are now available for $60. I would expect the 2013 ultra low end handsets will be 4.* which is really going to be a game changer.
- robhawkes 14y agoThe performance of Firefox OS today on 800MHz hardware is many times better than it was on the Nexus S devices back in the day. This is partly due to hardware but mostly due to the OS maturing. In short, today's build of Firefox OS will run very fast on these developer specifications.
- nicpottier 14y agoGood to hear, maybe time to load it up again to see where it has gone. I was really jazzed about it (bought a Nexus S just for the occasion) but seeing just how bad it was really broke my heart.
- Vaanir 14y agoAny hint on the prices? No doubt they will be priced cheaper than the Nexus 4.
- zokier 14y agoDeveloper preview probably means very small production run, which in turn means high unit price. Final, mass produced devices of course should be significantly cheaper.
- cageface 14y agoYep. Android is going to go over the top this year selling 4.x devices well under the price points of any of the competition. Software ultimately matters more than hardware and we're rapidly getting to that point in mobile.
- panacea 14y agoThe masses: "Should I buy an iPhone or a Galaxy?"
- truxs 14y agoOn the other hand it's a dev preview, not something designed to be used by high end customers.
- PommeDeTerre 14y agoI think the important point is that consumers don't care about Firefox OS today, and likely won't in the future, even if it ever becomes widely available. Right now, Firefox OS is extremely far back in line. It's behind Android, iOS, various mobile versions of Windows, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, MeeGo, and several others. If it offered something special, then there's the remote possibility that it could succeed. But it really doesn't. It's quite unremarkable, and the emphasis on using HTML5 and JavaScript for app development will likely repulse many good developers who'd prefer to use a language like C, C++, Java or Objective-C. It just keeps looking more and more like a dead end, even as they make progress.
- walls 14y agoIt's a ton of wasted effort, at best. From the start I've failed to understand why Mozilla thinks something like this is necessary, or even wanted.
- untog 14y agothe emphasis on using HTML5 and JavaScript for app development will likely repulse many good developers who'd prefer to use a language like C, C++, Java or Objective-C. But it will attract developers who use HTML5 and Javascript, of which there are a great number. FirefoxOS is clearly aiming itself at low-end devices in emerging markets. None of the other players have done a great job here, so yes, there is a market. We're just not in it.
- pekk 14y agoA brand new thing is not behind things which have been effectively abandoned by their makers, such as Symbian. Even compared with platforms like Blackberry, there is much greater opportunity to build momentum as a new exciting thing (Blackberry isn't going anywhere). Which isn't to say this momentum will be used well. Like it or not, the core of the idea is using web technologies. And there are good developers who like this. After all, you can use the same mix of skills to make the website as the mobile app. If you want to write apps in Java or Objective-C, there are already platforms for that. Firefox OS will not get extra traction by being an inferior version of those platforms.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- girvo 14y agoSeriously? I don't understand. The PPI is more than adequate ,and 4.3" is the sweet spot in size for me personally. What would you prefer?
- cageface 14y agoIt's too late in this generation for another serious competitor to emerge in mobile. Microsoft might be able to muscle its way into double digits but everybody else is just too late to the game now. Better to focus on what comes after phones & tablets, whatever that is.
- jackalope 14y agoThere is still a lot of dissatisfaction with mobile, and plenty of room for improvement. The leaders want you to marry their platform at the expense of services offered by competitors. A newcomer might make inroads just by making it easy to use various competing services out of the box.
- cageface 14y agoThat describes Apple well enough but Google's stuff is everywhere and best in class in most cases.
- jawngee 14y agoIt's certainly best in class in touch parallax and mediocre usability.
- cageface 14y agoBecause nothing defines usability like a crap soft keyboard, broken voice search, broken inter-app sharing, tiny, static notifications, and junk stock apps, right? Take away Gmail, Google maps, and Google search and all your iphone has left to brag about is smooth scrolling.
- jackalope 14y agoGoogle Sync was EOL'd 2 days before I bought my Windows 8 phone, leaving me with no way to sync my Google calendar on it. I don't want to be in anybody's walled garden exclusively, I want more interoperability and platform independence. Even Google has plenty of room for improvement.
- girvo 14y agoI'm stoked that they partnered with geeksphone. I adored my geeksphone one. The pricing is what will be important here, as the low end android handsets are still lacking in the low-end market, in terms of performance anyway[0]. If they beat Androids performance, and development is easy, then it has a shot in my opinion. I mean, your basic apps are there already (such as http://x.Facebook.com http://x.Facebook.com), and if it's simple enough to port my mobile web apps over, I know I'll take the plunge. [0] Source: I sell phones in Australia
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- luisivan 14y agoI know Javier, the 20-yo entrepreneur behind Geeksphone - he's a brilliant mind, simply outstanding. I also know the CEO, really nice guy. They knew it was gonna be a risky move, but I think they just nailed it. Congratulations Javier and the Geeksphone staff!
- Millennium 14y agoThere's a phrase that has been going around the usual meme-heavy sites for some time that I think would be useful here: "Shut up and take my money." Strutting around while making announcements of something people already know about, only to have those announcements lead to a holding page rather than a buying opportunity, only irritates people. Give them something they can buy, and they will.
- trotsky 14y agoIs that an officially endorsed dev platform by Mozilla? It sure seems to imply it, but I can't see anything on the website that directly says so. I have no doubt it'll run the builds, but when you're buying a pre-launch dev platform it makes a big difference if it's the one the core devs are going to be using and be an official platform target. I'm not suggesting it isn't, but its not on the site.
- wmf 14y agoIs this official enough? It's on the front page. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-developer-preview-phone/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/01/announcing-the-firefox-os-...
- mrbill 14y agoI'd be interested if either of these dev phones were $150 or less, but I know they're not going to be...
- densh 14y agoI'm going to buy a device just to support their initiative. For some reason I think it might become a raspberry pi of phone segment. Everything is open source so it's possible to tweak it as much as you heart desires. Considering specs of the lower gen phone it should cost about $100.
- pekk 14y agoA $100-to-consumers, thoroughly hackable phone would be a bonanza for geeky hobbyists, feature phone users and Chinese companies selling to the developing world. Let's see if they can get prices down to where people will not think too much about how they'd rather have Android.
- NanoWar 14y agoOne thing that keeps bothering me are circular app icons. I don't know, it's different but I just disagree. That facebook logo in a ... bubble :)
- kibwen 14y agoIt's all just CSS! A quick border-radius: 4px; will bring back the rounded rectangles you know and love.
- adamkochanowicz 14y agoCouldn't they have done this design without ripping off the water droplet background from Apple? http://www.geeksphone.com/#slider-peak http://www.geeksphone.com/#slider-peak
- AaronMT 14y agoLooks different to me http://mxr.mozilla.org/gaia/source/apps/wallpaper/resources/320x480/FXOS_Water_Drops.png http://mxr.mozilla.org/gaia/source/apps/wallpaper/resources/... http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/raindrops.jpg http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/...
- jrockway 14y agoThe windows in my 1850s-era apartment do this automatically when it rains, so I'm guessing Apple didn't come up with this idea alone.
- zobzu 14y agoirony: this site looks bad on firefox for android
- firefoxman1 14y agoAww come on! I just ordered an N9 so I could run Firefox OS (and several other phone OSes coming out this year) and now this comes out?