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I hope they don't do an Android I.e 18 fragmented broken rarely upgraded OS's with horrible carrier customisation. This is the area that Microsoft with WinPhon

by meaty 14y ago

I hope they don't do an Android I.e 18 fragmented broken rarely upgraded OS's with horrible carrier customisation. This is the area that Microsoft with WinPhone 7+ and Apple with iOS have got right.

rayiner 14y ago
But that's what will happen. This looks destined to be a competitor to Android in the low-end space, allowing carriers and handset manufacturers to customize their offerings to differentiate them from the other cheap offerings.
- currysausage 14y ago
  It really amuses me that those Android phone manufacturers seem to believe customers gave a s--t about them trying to differentiate themselves from other brands. Actually, if customers obviously don't care about their horrible disimprovements, it only shows that they don't care at all. Do those managers even use their own gadgets? I believe not. What I don't get is why they don't allow me to put a vanilla Android on the device. Oh, wait: they want me to buy a new phone when a major Android update comes out. Nope, guys, I'm gonna stick with iPhone or Nexus. Too sad the majority of customers likes to be fooled.
  - yareally 14y ago
    > Too sad the majority of customers likes to be fooled. Not really fooled, just ignorant. Google is partially to blame for not marketing and cultivating Android as a brand more and leaving it up to OEMs (who mostly ignore it as a brand to differentiate once again).
- zobzu 14y ago
  It has some key advantages update wise, if carriers play the game properly. You can update FFOS in a restartless fashion for most cases.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    Given it doesn't make carriers (only the OS) look bad if they don't, why would they bother to put in the engineering effort to do this?
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Most Windows Phone devices in the hands of customers aren't even running the same kernel as the most recent version.
- meaty 14y ago
  And? Apart from the Kernel, 7.5 and 8 are pretty much identical and 99.9% of all apps work fine on both. I have both devices sitting in front of me. The same cannot be said between say Android 2.3 which is still in circulation and 4.whatever-is-current.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    >The same cannot be said between say Android 2.3 which is still in circulation and 4.whatever-is-current. Pfft. Says who?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - yareally 14y ago
      > Pfft. Says who? Says Google, with 45% still using 2.3. Also, all my apps outside of ones for root users are still a majority of 2.3 users. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
      - ergo14 14y ago
        There are only few apps that dont work on 2.3 versions of android - most often new launchers - i think thats what the comment above was implying.
        yareally 14y ago
        Didn't think of it that way, but they would be correct if that was the case. 2.3 and above is easy enough to code for with the compatibility library. 2.2 is mostly okay, unless one wants to use something like the download manager api added in 2.3.
csuwldcat 14y ago
The release cycle should be quite rapid, more so than any of the the existing OS platforms on the market. Additionally, if you can develop web sites/apps well on "evergreen" desktop browsers like Firefox and Chrome, the experience will be almost identical. Do you feel desktop Firefox and Chrome browsers upgrade too slowly today? If not, you're in luck, because the Gecko (JS, HTML, CSS) engine in Firefox OS can be updated just about as fast - after all, the Gecko engine that evaluates your markup, styles, and JS code in Firefox OS is the same one that's in the Firefox desktop browser ;)
- meaty 14y ago
  I don't think that carriers will take a rapid release cycle.
  - shardling 14y ago
    The impression I got is that FirefoxOS is designed in such a way that it'll be a bit easier to upgrade than e.g. Android. I think with Android, carriers are slow to upgrade because each update can create hardware incompatibility. With FF OS, they can hopefully upgrade Gecko (thus exposing new functionality to web apps) without messing with the device drivers etc. For whatever reasons, that doesn't seem possible with Android updates. They can also upgrade the UI really easily (it's just HTML), but I assume that wouldn't be able to expose new APIS/functionality to apps.
    - fabrice_d 14y ago
      That's basically correct. We can update Gecko (the web runtime) and Gaia (the core apps) independently of firmware updates.
      - shawn-butler 14y ago
        This is what will get stuck in carrier certification I imagine. WebOS tried the same thing around 3.xx when they moved the App catalog out of ROM. How will you handle overriding user changes to the apps? Will you overwrite them automatically?

by meaty 14y ago

I hope they don't do an Android I.e 18 fragmented broken rarely upgraded OS's with horrible carrier customisation. This is the area that Microsoft with WinPhone 7+ and Apple with iOS have got right.

rayiner 14y ago

But that's what will happen. This looks destined to be a competitor to Android in the low-end space, allowing carriers and handset manufacturers to customize their offerings to differentiate them from the other cheap offerings.

currysausage 14y ago
It really amuses me that those Android phone manufacturers seem to believe customers gave a s--t about them trying to differentiate themselves from other brands. Actually, if customers obviously don't care about their horrible disimprovements, it only shows that they don't care at all. Do those managers even use their own gadgets? I believe not. What I don't get is why they don't allow me to put a vanilla Android on the device. Oh, wait: they want me to buy a new phone when a major Android update comes out. Nope, guys, I'm gonna stick with iPhone or Nexus. Too sad the majority of customers likes to be fooled.
- yareally 14y ago
  > Too sad the majority of customers likes to be fooled. Not really fooled, just ignorant. Google is partially to blame for not marketing and cultivating Android as a brand more and leaving it up to OEMs (who mostly ignore it as a brand to differentiate once again).
zobzu 14y ago
It has some key advantages update wise, if carriers play the game properly. You can update FFOS in a restartless fashion for most cases.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  Given it doesn't make carriers (only the OS) look bad if they don't, why would they bother to put in the engineering effort to do this?

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Most Windows Phone devices in the hands of customers aren't even running the same kernel as the most recent version.

meaty 14y ago
And? Apart from the Kernel, 7.5 and 8 are pretty much identical and 99.9% of all apps work fine on both. I have both devices sitting in front of me. The same cannot be said between say Android 2.3 which is still in circulation and 4.whatever-is-current.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  >The same cannot be said between say Android 2.3 which is still in circulation and 4.whatever-is-current. Pfft. Says who?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - yareally 14y ago
    > Pfft. Says who? Says Google, with 45% still using 2.3. Also, all my apps outside of ones for root users are still a majority of 2.3 users. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
    - ergo14 14y ago
      There are only few apps that dont work on 2.3 versions of android - most often new launchers - i think thats what the comment above was implying.
      - yareally 14y ago
        Didn't think of it that way, but they would be correct if that was the case. 2.3 and above is easy enough to code for with the compatibility library. 2.2 is mostly okay, unless one wants to use something like the download manager api added in 2.3.

csuwldcat 14y ago

The release cycle should be quite rapid, more so than any of the the existing OS platforms on the market. Additionally, if you can develop web sites/apps well on "evergreen" desktop browsers like Firefox and Chrome, the experience will be almost identical. Do you feel desktop Firefox and Chrome browsers upgrade too slowly today? If not, you're in luck, because the Gecko (JS, HTML, CSS) engine in Firefox OS can be updated just about as fast - after all, the Gecko engine that evaluates your markup, styles, and JS code in Firefox OS is the same one that's in the Firefox desktop browser ;)

meaty 14y ago
I don't think that carriers will take a rapid release cycle.
- shardling 14y ago
  The impression I got is that FirefoxOS is designed in such a way that it'll be a bit easier to upgrade than e.g. Android. I think with Android, carriers are slow to upgrade because each update can create hardware incompatibility. With FF OS, they can hopefully upgrade Gecko (thus exposing new functionality to web apps) without messing with the device drivers etc. For whatever reasons, that doesn't seem possible with Android updates. They can also upgrade the UI really easily (it's just HTML), but I assume that wouldn't be able to expose new APIS/functionality to apps.
  - fabrice_d 14y ago
    That's basically correct. We can update Gecko (the web runtime) and Gaia (the core apps) independently of firmware updates.
    - shawn-butler 14y ago
      This is what will get stuck in carrier certification I imagine. WebOS tried the same thing around 3.xx when they moved the App catalog out of ROM. How will you handle overriding user changes to the apps? Will you overwrite them automatically?