15 ms·
Mozilla and Partners Prepare to Launch First Firefox OS Smartphones
- anon1385 13y ago>customized phone experience based on your needs Can you disable Javascript?
- patrickaljord 13y agoThe whole UI is written in HTML+JS so that would be like bricking your phone I guess.
- Stranger2013 13y agoBut it might get drastically colder :).
- Jare 13y agoWell played, you have me in tears laughing.
- mbel 13y agoActually, I think, disabling JS in default web browser is a very neat feature for smartphone to have.
- vidarh 13y agoSure. You press the off button.
- marban 13y agoReleasing only low-budget hardware is probably not the best strategy to break into the existing market. That is, phones like these are doomed to be used by people who aren't even aware of what kind of OS the phone uses as long as it's labeled smartphone and comes with a cheap plan and a facebook app.
- josteink 13y agoI don't know. It sounds like a good strategy to gain market-share in a post economic-crisis, recession-stricken Europe. You wont get a generation of still-unemployed-at-30 spaniards to buy your €600 phone when they have trouble getting ends to meet. A €60 smart-phone however, that stands a chance.
- marban 13y agoI said <only> low-budget. This worked great for Android (including postponing brand-building) but things have changed and since this target group probably doesn't care about openness I see little arguments left.
- kokey 13y agoAlso the rest of the developing world, especially Africa, where Firefox OS looks like a very strong replacement for Blackberry and Nokia feature phones.
- camus 13y agoI agree , in my opinion this phone is(should be a) a geek phone. People in developping countries usually have feature phones or cheap android phones ( that can get as cheap as 60 USD .
- Yoric 13y agoJust a guess, but I suspect that the FirefoxOS phones in developing countries will be priced ~60USD.
- panacea 13y agoThat demo video made my teeth hurt. Like going back in time to before the first iPhone was released.
- marban 13y agoI think the first iPhone did a better job in smooth scrolling.
- slacka 13y agoAll the previews I've read say that Firefox OS needs high-end hardware to deliver a responsive UI. "Its unresponsive screen makes typing a laborious process requiring painstaking precision. Every action from swiping to tapping onscreen controls takes a beat until you see results, so using the phone for a prolonged period steals minutes of your time. Lag carries into the camera, which is slow to launch, snap, and reset."[1] For $90, I would rather have a refurbished iPhone 3GS. A 3GS has 16GB of internal storage vs this phones 512MB and runs Apple's latest iOS 6. With native performance you get a silky smooth experience from the homescreen to apps even on budget hardware. [1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57591716-94/firefox-os-phone-launches-tuesday-in-spain-at-$3-a-month/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57591716-94/firefox-os-phon...
- holri 13y agoI've played with the low power developer Firefox Geekphones and the UI was very responsive. Also an iPhone is the opposite of a free phone, so this is no competition for Firefox OS.
- oblique63 13y ago> Also an iPhone is the opposite of a free phone, so this is no competition for Firefox OS. Now, I'm a big anti-apple/open source proponent too, but just having that as a selling point isn't gonna win them a whole lot of users; just look at what happened with the OpenMoko project. After watching the demo, I think it might've made a decent competitor back when Gingerbread was still fresh, but now I'm not so sure. If there's one thing I do admire about Apple, it's that they seem to really only release stuff that's 'fully baked', even if not everybody agrees with the decisions they make.
- toble 13y agoOpenMoko is virtually unheard of even within the tech world. Firefox is a good, strong brand for the OS to ride on.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
- jwarren 13y agoI know that Mozilla aren't on the same realm of level of revenue as Apple or Google, and that they can't spend a fortune on marketing. However, that must've been one of the least inspiring product demo videos I've ever watched. It does nothing on selling me on the virtues of the phone, just running through some extraordinarily anonymous features. I realise it's extremely affordable, but that hardware looks like it does almost nothing well. While I want to develop mobile apps, I don't particularly want to develop for this device, despite the HTML/CSS/JS support fitting neatly in my skillset. The app store is probably the most curious thing, but that's hidden away and quickly glossed over. If this starts reaching developing nations, with mobile internet etc, then I could see the benefit, and that's something that I'd love to engage with. At the moment it just seems like a weird brand exercise.
- PommeDeTerre 13y agoFirefox OS is one of the most obviously-wasteful and doomed efforts we've seen in a long time. There is no compelling reason to use it, or for it to even exist. It offers no tangible benefits that we can't get elsewhere. What it does offer is pretty lousy. The only two arguments we see used to support its existence are both badly flawed: 1) Devices running it are "affordable". Maybe this is true in some absolute sense, but relative to other mobile OSes and devices this "affordability" comes at a very steep cost in terms of usability and practicality. Used Android and iOS devices can also be acquired quite cheaply these days (even in poorer nations), but unlike Firefox OS and its devices these used devices are comparatively powerful and much more practical to use. 2) It's "open". This argument is academic at best. We can already use HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and other so-called "open" technologies on Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, and many other of the less-common mobile OSes. Android and some of the other mobile OSes are already open source software, so it's not like Firefox OS has any advantage in that sense, as well. The whole reliance on JavaScript makes Firefox OS even less-open, in my opinion. When it comes to using Android or iOS, for instance, at least we have the option of using mature, non-JavaScript languages. No, I don't really consider CoffeeScript, TypeScript or Dart to be anything but JavaScript with a prettier syntax and/or slightly better type checking. The effort put into Firefox OS would have been much better spent fixing desktop Firefox, or Firefox running on existing mobile devices. Even putting it toward Thunderbird would've been useful. But it has instead been wasted on an eighth-in-line mobile OS with limited capabilities and a severe lack of usability compared to its competitors.
- pjmlp 13y agoFollowing WebOS footsteps...
- garysweaver 13y agoWith two big differences: 1. Knowledge resources available to team and experience of the organization in the subject matter far exceed what the WebOS team had. 2. Was free/open and somewhat collaborative almost from the beginning. I say "somewhat collaborative" because the priority of the team was to create an operating system for a phone, with other forms (like a computer connected to other devices) taking a far backseat. However, I agree in that, despite optimizations, it has a long way to go to compete with Android which almost "owns" the market it is after. Politically, the timing is fairly good this announcement, though. Right after Google's black eye over privacy concerns, people might be slightly more likely to embrace Mozilla products. But, who knows. Competing in Android's turf is going to be a serious uphill battle. It will succeed if: 1. They really embrace community input and provide incentives for people to get involved. That is part of being Mozilla. They don't need to be Apple or Google. 2. They need a charismatic leader with the vision of Jobs, someone with the design talent of Jony Ive, and someone that is capable of recruiting and organizing community talent like _______ (a name doesn't come to mind).
- smacktoward 13y agoThere's also four years' worth of hardware advancement that they get to ride on for free. Mobile hardware is a lot more sophisticated now than it was in 2009, so making an HTML+CSS+JS interface that feels performant is easier today than it was then.
- pjmlp 13y agoLet me know when then run at same speed as native apps, otherwise I can use existing mobile OS and their respective browsers.
- pjmlp 13y agoPersonally I won't ever exchange native apps performance for HTML5 based apps.
- andrewcooke 13y agotelefonica chile: you work with alcatel; if you released that here on pay-as-you-go then i'd buy one in a heartbeat...
- dombili 13y agoMaybe this is me being delusional, but Geeksphone's models were running much more smoother than this (this being the Alcatel phone in the demo). I think the OS is fine and it'd work nicely on a good hardware, but it just needs time. It's gotta be hard to sell a phone that's cheap and has a good hardware. But I'm hopeful and rooting for Mozilla to pull this off.
- bsaul 13y agoThe war with Tizen only get started. Yet, it's funny how those two OS will end up being almost 100% compatible (at least for webapps), and so in the end, it won't really matter which one you'll be using. Maybe this will start a new trend of "web phones", and will push android towards becoming more of a "chrome os".
- PommeDeTerre 13y agoThis "war" you speak of is between two mobile OSes making up literally a small fraction of one percent of all mobile users. BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone, which are nearly irrelevant compared to Android and iOS, are absolutely huge compared to Firefox OS, Tizen, and the other mobile OSes. Firefox OS and Tizen will have absolutely no impact on Android.
- BariumBlue 13y agoDifferent consumers; there's probably a fair amount of overlap between people who'd use Firefox OS and people who'd use Tizen. Not that I think either will really take off.
- bsaul 13y agoI know it's not going to matter this year, and probably not next year either. But the fact that it's going to be extremely easy to develop on those platform, plus the fact that it's probably also be a lot easier to deploy your apps (than on Apple store) probably means that those OSes will gain a lot of traction. There's also the theory that Samsung will probably want to stop being dependent on Google, and use its own OS. That could be a game changer.
- zanny 13y agoI think Chrome OS will have a big impact on Android, though. It seems like such a silly business model for Google to push web apps on their netbook platform but put forth Java first on mobile. I imagine Android 5 will probably have default-Chrome and at least put its app store next to play and try to push developers that way.
- frozenport 13y agoI am always confused by the race to the bottom approach in electronics. These are device that people will spent hundreds of hours on, what is $60 dollars of savings stretched over the course of a 2 year contract? I understand that in developing nations like Ethiopia or India this might be significant but in Spain?
- dhs 13y ago44 percent of all Spaniards under 25 are currently jobless.
- frozenport 13y agoCertainly, but they aren't living in poverty. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits_in_Spain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits_in_Spain Person with no children: 497.01 / 1087,21 euro which is $650 for doing nothing.
- rednukleus 13y agoSpain is extremely price sensitive at the moment. Android has around a 90% marketshare in Spain - largely driven by inexpensive Android phones. Windows Phone is gaining traction, and Apple are not even in the top 5 manufacturers.
- jotaass 13y agoNevermind the fact that in order to qualify for unemployment benefits you must have worked and contributed in the last few years. As it turns out, most unemployment in Spain, and countries in the same situation, is from fresh out of college students who never had a chance. Well, you can argue that there is always a choice. And most of them take it, by leaving everything behind and moving to Germany or other central european country. Until they don't want them there anymore.
- juandopazo 13y agoI'm surprised by the early launch. I've been using a Geeksphone Peak as my primary phone for a couple of weeks and FirefoxOS is far from ready. There are bugs, missing features, apps that won't do basic things... Here I was thinking FirefoxOS needed an extra year of development and they're already launching devices!
- menubar 13y agoI'm in the "You-get-what-you-pay-for" school. Besides being the phone all others are compared against, iPhone is standardized to fit a variety of 3rd party components; lenses, camera mounts, car mounts, etc. Dependability is another aspect that should not be neglected to save a few $. If it's something you depend upon every day, you don't want to be disappointed when it matters most. I guess a free Firefox OS phone would be great for homeless or families too poor to afford a decent phone.
- josteink 13y ago> I guess a free Firefox OS phone would be great for homeless or families too poor to afford a decent phone. Or people who value freedom over eyecandy. Or people with principles and ideals. And maybe even people who can see outside the San Francisco hipster smug. People with long term visions, like the people who originally created the WWW had. We definitely need more people like that and we need the tech crowd to support them. Your comment adds nothing of value.
- embolism 13y agoAndroid is also free and is far more capable. What does Firefox OS bring to the table?
- josteink 13y agoAll Android apps (which most users see) are still closed apps, delivered through a closed app store, using propietary APIs. Chances are that all the apps you have invested in and the data you have put into them will be lost if you migrate to another phone or eco-system. Firefox OS, by ensuring that everything is HTML-based and pretty much delivered as web-pages means that you can never have your data and apps locked in the same way you can on Android and iPhone. Firefox OS delivers freedom in such complete form that no other platform can compete. Firefox OS is in fact so open that if you in the end get fed up with it (for whatever reason), you can still take all your apps, all your data and move on to whatever you want. You will lose nothing. You have to admit that is something pretty unique.
- andylei 13y agoif i'm in the US, how do I actually buy one?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- karussell 13y agoCould someone explain me how one can implement offline features like navigation etc for this phone? Is there an API besides HTML+JS?
- Yoric 13y agoYou can find everything here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Apps https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Apps
- karussell 13y agoThanks! Hmmh, but all I see is WebApp, WebGL, JavaScript, HTML, ... I don't see 'native' -> How would I implement an offline navigation? (which is currently really not possible in JavaScript) Or is it just not possible to create a resource intensive or tricky application in FireFox OS?
- Yoric 13y agoYou don't need native to develop offline applications. Perhaps this is what you're looking for: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_application_cache https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl... If you could provide examples of what you mean by "resource intensive" or "tricky", it might be easier to help you.
- karussell 13y agoHow would you develop an application to do offline routing like my GraphHopper road routing project? Such applications have to use the RAM or disc access provided by the OS. A simple cache will not do it. Although I could imagine that JavaScript is fast enough these days you still need access to lots of memory and load several hundred MB from somewhere/disc
- doublec 13y agoYou could download the routing data into IndexedDB and use that for your file system.
- anoncow 13y agoAny info on country-wise availability, especially India?
- Apocryphon 13y agoThere's still room for an alt, "hacker" OS that's seen as not in the pocket of Google: a Linux of the smartphone world. Tizen, being Samsung's beast, doesn't quite fit that description. So between Firefox OS, Ubuntu Mobile, Sailfish OS, Open webOS, (any others?) I'm wondering which one will capture the hearts and minds of the hacker community, if not any relevant marketshare.
- abraham 13y agoCyanogenmod seems to be doing a pretty good job.
- lurchpop 13y agoSo is this going to be like android where facebook app is compulsory?
- elehack 13y agoDoes anyone know how feasible it is to use a Firefox OS phone with no data plan? Using GSM for voice calls and SMS, but forcing it to only do data over wifi?
- Yoric 13y agoI've been doing that for ~6 months, without problem.
- particlewave 13y agoGoogle doesn't charge you to use Android and Mozilla doesn't charge you to use FF OS. So how will FF OS be able to deliver cheaper phones? It seems if they are able to bring down prices by introducing this "no-contract cheap phone option" into the market (which may be a good thing), then nothing stops the same exact manufacturer from releasing the same exact hardware running Android for the same exact price sine the OS doesn't play into the cost in either case.
- Yoric 13y agoI may be wrong, but I seem to remember that Google does charge the companies that build these devices, so that cost is propagated somewhere to the consumer. However, the real cost saver is the fact that, in my experience, FirefoxOS largely outperforms Android on many tasks, and generally is usable on hardware that is much cheaper than anything Android requires to run these days.