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All 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 re

• holri 13y ago
  I'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 ago
      OpenMoko is virtually unheard of even within the tech world. Firefox is a good, strong brand for the OS to ride on.
    • ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      By "fully baked" do you mean a phone that can only run web apps? (Note that I'm talking about the original iPhone, not Firefox OS).
      • oblique63 13y ago
        I meant more in terms of performance and UX than features. If Firefox OS delivers on displaying web apps really darn well, then more power to it, but the demo didn't really stand out in that way either. Most likely the poor hardware, but again, that's still part of the end user experience which is crucial imo. Ubuntu's mobile os seems to perform much more smoothly from the demos I've seen for example, but I'm not sure how the hardware compares to the sets that were used for these Firefox os demos.
        • nical 13y ago
          Indeed, when comparing ubuntu's mobile os running on a galaxy nexus with firefox os running on very cheap hardware, you should expect a difference. I would be interested in seing how ubuntu mobile runs on a 69 euro phone.
          • oblique63 13y ago
            Yeah, I'd be curious to see that too. However, end users don't usually care about hardware specs directly, they care about the end experience. And if you're pushing for a new platform right now, you have to really try and build an ecosystem around it as soon as possible by earning enough fans and developers to keep the platform sustainable. And as developers, I know we like to think we're rather objective about a technology's 'true' merits, but UX impacts our decisions too. So if Ubuntu ships their OS on hardware that will provide a better experience than any FFOS phone out there, Imma place my bets on the OS that shipped with the better overall UX out the gate (even if it's not as cheap initially). I mean, it's not like we didn't already see this partially play out with WebOS. Even Windows phones are struggling and they seem to have a really nice UX...
        • thelukester 13y ago
    • espadrine 13y ago
      > If there's one thing I do admire about Apple, it's that they seem to really only release stuff that's 'fully baked' Unfortunately, they overbaked Maps.
    • holri 13y ago
      Don't you think that the NSA debacle makes ordinary people more and more people sensitive about there freedom? Trust is the baseground of any purchase.
    • holri 13y ago
      Freedom is not only the selling point to customers but also and more importantly to the telephone companies. It seems that they appreciate that freedom a lot. They have the marketing power to make the phones a success in the mass market.
  • zokier 13y ago
    Idk what class of hardware they were using on the demo video, but it at least appeared quite laggy.
  • Yoric 13y ago
    Same here, I've been using the lowest version for a few months and the UI is much, much, much more responsive than on the low-end Android phones I have tested.
• tehwalrus 13y ago
  iPhones only have internal storage. Firefox phones come with an expansion slot; you can get a micro SD card to add 16GB for $11 on amazon.
  • melling 13y ago
    Who cares? Geeks need to stop thinking like geeks. I know it's not easy but knowing what's important to the average consumer is critical.
    • smtddr 13y ago
      melling, being able to accept a microSD card is a big deal even to people who are non-techie. My wife takes many, many pics and having a 32gig microSD card is very good if you like take pics, record vids, have music and have a bunch of kids Tv shows to calm a child. I don't even take many pics, and my Samsung Galaxy player with 5 gigs internal and 32 gigs sdcard is almost filled.
      • PommeDeTerre 13y ago
        While useful, of course, I don't think it's as big of a deal as you suggest it is. If it were, the iPhone wouldn't be as popular as it is, for instance.
        • smtddr 13y ago
          Just because the iPhone is popular without microSD expansion doesn't mean the feature isn't a big deal. It's still important enough to be a deal breaker for some people. It's definitely not a feature only geeks care about as the OP seems to think.
    • tehwalrus 13y ago
      This isn't thinking like a geek, I'm sorry. comparing the internal storage on an Android/Firefox OS phone to an iPhone is comparing apples with oranges[1]; consumers know about SD cards and have done for years. [1] no pun intended, although given my Keon's case colour, it is quite a good one :)
• ohwp 13y ago
  "For $90, I would rather have a refurbished iPhone 3GS." You might be surprised (as I was) but Windows 8 is the most responsive mobile OS I've ever seen. Maybe it's even the best mobile OS at the moment. You can get a new Nokia Lumia 521 for about $150. A very underestimated phone.
  • imaffett 13y ago
    I gotta agree, the main experience of WP8 is amazing. Maps is extremely fluid and the development tools are great. You can really see problems with the 521 on IE. The browser performance reminds me of Android 2.3. Now, the Lumia 9xx series is rock solid. But I haven't been able to give up my 4s (Nokia should really be giving them away)
  • cpursley 13y ago
    Just bought the Nokia 521 for $100 (ebay, still in box). It's an awesome phone. Windows Phone 8 has the best UI on the market by a long shot. Makes Android feel unusable and iOS old and clumsy. Downside is fewer apps, but all the big names are there.
  • PallarelCoedr 13y ago
    Can I use a browser other than IE on it?
    • ohwp 13y ago
      I'm not sure you can already but in the near future, yes: Firefox, Opera and Chrome.
      • Yoric 13y ago
        Hum. Last time I checked, Windows 8 for ARM explicitly prevented non-IE browsers from launching.
      • freehunter 13y ago
        On Windows Phone 8? I've been using Windows Phone since the launch of WP7 and I've never heard of a competitor's browser being allowed, nor of a decision to change this. Windows 8 possibly, but the OP seems to be confused between the two because Windows 8 doesn't run on anything ARM made by Nokia.
• Stranger2013 13y ago
  At higher price people will complain about lack of standard apps. I doubt there is a phone-friendly HTML5 Angry Birds out there.
  • pyre 13y ago
    IIRC, there is/was a Chrome Store version of Angry Birds. Not sure what the mobile performance would be though (or the gestures support for that matter).
• nical 13y ago
  At some point we will really need be careful when talking about "native performances". FirefoxOS is written in JS on top of Gecko which is as "native" as it can be. if an app's UI is well written, all of the computationally expensive stuff happens in gecko. A good way to see that it is not about being native it is to compare Android and FirefoxOS on the exact same phone. "native performances" still makes sense if you are talking about building physics engines or whatever kind of heavy simulations, but not for 90% percent of the smartphone apps today.
  • rimantas 13y ago
    > "native performances" still makes sense if you are talking > about building physics engines or whatever kind of heavy > simulations, but not for 90% percent of the smartphone > apps today. You have no idea what does it cost to have 60fps scrolling of the non-trival view. Update: after watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu8q-oISbas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu8q-oISbas I do not understand how anyone can call UI responsive and maintain a straight face. Or I do not know what are you comparing it to. Just take a look how the contacts app works :(
    • nical 13y ago
      I do have ideas. I also have a decent knowledge about how Gecko's graphics engine works internally. And again, the expensive operations (actual image rendering, layout computation, compositing, etc.) all happen in the platform, that is in "native" C++ code. What it costs to to have a good scrolling experience is to write your app in a way that doesn't cause the engine to over-invalidate and compute reflows all the time. Or it costs beefier hardware, but then this is not part of the debate of web vs native.
• Nux 13y ago
  As a user of GP Peak I can testify the UI is almost snappy enough, but once you open up Firefox (or any other app that relies on web) everything slows down considerably, the devices freezes or is extremely slow to respond to input and the battery is hammered. Half an hour of attempts to browse the web and do stuff can halve it. Other than that, the phone itself performs it's basic functions just fine and the battery life is quite good if you don't touch any of the "smart" features. Having said that, the device is a developer preview and I like Mozilla and their mission and I hope they will succeed with subsequent versions.
  • callahad 13y ago
    Have you tried the nightly builds? My Keon ran significantly faster with them. Unfortunately, a few things were still a bit broken, so I reverted to the normal builds for day-to-day use. Still, there seems to be plenty of room for software-based improvements on modest hardware.
    • Nux 13y ago
      Yes, I have tried the nightly at some point, indeed I saw some improvements, but also broken stuff: - scrolling in firefox produced really weird "oscillations" that never really went away unless quitting the application. - youtube stopped working (not that i can use it reasonably otherwise) etc. I guess I should try it again one of these days.
      • callahad 13y ago
        Yeah, nightly builds are not suitable for daily use, but they do show that the same hardware and stack can deliver much better performance in the very near future.
• Yoric 13y ago
  There's something wrong with your quote and/or the previews that you have read. For one thing, the link you provide doesn't contain that quote anywhere that I can see. Perhaps you intended to post a different link? Secondly, I have been using a Firefox OS developer preview phone for several months (one less powerful than the ZTE, I believe), and the UI is extremely snappy. As all 1.0s it still has rough edges that I only hope will be softened by future upgrades, but I find the user experience generally pleasant. Finally, you can certainly grab a refurbished iPhone if you prefer. iOS 6 is certainly visually nicer than Firefox OS 1.0. But the whole point of FirefoxOS is freedom from silos. One of the consequences is that the appstore will not simply drop support on you whenever Apple (or whoever owns your silo) decides that they want to force you into buying a new phone. Unless I'm mistaken, another of the consequences is that any application bought on FirefoxOS will still belong to you if decide to move to an Android phone or to your Windows/MacOS/Linux personal computer (sorry, no iPhone support, Apple wouldn't want that kind of thing to happen). Oh, and of course, with a Firefox OS phone, you can just write and deploy your own apps without having to ask anybody's permission. I wrote a (small) game during a conference and released it a few days later, before the Marketplace was even open. If visual effects are more important to you than this kind of freedom, yes, by all means, go ahead and buy a refurbished iPhone. Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.
  • PommeDeTerre 13y ago
    The benefits you list for Firefox OS may not apply to iOS, but they do apply to Android, too. I can install apps on my Android phone without using any app store, for instance. I can freely write my own Android apps, and distribute them myself, without having to pay anyone or get permission to do so. I don't have to upgrade to a newer version of Android if I don't want to. If I can already get all of that with Android, and so much more (such as decent performance, the ability to develop apps in languages other than JavaScript, access to a huge number of existing applications, and so on), what is it that should be compelling me to use Firefox OS instead? Furthermore, various incidents since the release of Firefox 4 have also shaken my trust in Mozilla. Time and time again, we've seen decisions made with very limited community input, and apparently little regard to the impact that they'll have. I'm talking about how the approach to releases was changed in a way that broke extensions time and time again, for a long time. I'm talking about how the status bar has been removed, and the menu bar was hidden by default. I'm talking about how the protocol isn't shown in the URL bar. I'm talking about the latest incident from today, where the preferences dialog option for disabling JavaScript will apparently be removed in Firefox 23. Incidents like those make me very skeptical of the "openness" claims we hear time and time again with respect to Firefox OS.