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I have seen a $80 Firefox OS phone. The ZTE Open. I think it was $80, maybe it was 80EUR. It's unusable. Completely unusable. I can't fathom how a $25 phone wo

by 4ad 13y ago

I have seen a $80 Firefox OS phone. The ZTE Open. I think it was $80, maybe it was 80EUR. It's unusable. Completely unusable. I can't fathom how a $25 phone works.

muro 13y ago
I have the Keon (https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/dev_phone https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/dev_phone) here. It's not good - I could say it's directly manufactured electronic waste, but that would be rude, so I won't. The first iPhone and android phones were better - more than 5 years ago.
- idlewan 13y ago
  I have the Keon. It is perfectly fine for my usage (mostly texts and light browsing), and fast enough in most default apps. I am also quite impressed by how fluid applications from the market are, Cut the rope included (I expected it to have very crappy framerate, but no). My HTC Hero (which is totally obsolete by now - you can't upgrade Android phones once the manufacturer released other phones and doesn't care anymore) is only fluid on the home screen. Everything else (even the Play store!) is slow and laggy. I can't play most games and can't install most apps on the Hero (armv6 means no Firefox, no Telegram, no 'anything using jni'). So I strongly disagree: the Keon is good enough, and the first Android phones were NOT better (you seem spoiled, high-end user! Just because it's not as fast as $400 phones does not mean it can't be interesting).
  - camus2 13y ago
    sorry,you cant honestly recommand that phone.It's pure crap and a total waste of money.I suggest people looking for cheap feature phones to buy some old midlet based nokia/lg/sony.They do what a phone is supposed to do and they do it right,unlike Firefox os based phones which are pure crap. HTML5 based os need a lot of processing power,webos already proved it in the past. That's why firefox os will fail,it's not designed for lowend devices.
    - idlewan 13y ago
      Have you actually used a Firefox OS phone? You seem like you can't conceive that html apps on a FirefoxOS phone can be just as fast as any good app on another phone. If you tried Cordova/Phonegap on Android and didn't find the performance adequate, if you tried a web view on iOS and didn't find the performance adequate, just don't take the shortcut of believing that you would get the same inadequate performance on Firefox OS. The whole stack is different. HTML5 based os need a lot of processing power,webos already proved it in the past. WebOS and its fate proves nothing regarding the performance of mozilla's OS. That's why firefox os will fail,it's not designed for lowend devices. It IS designed for lowend devices. My Keon boots more than 3 times faster than my HTC Hero. In its early days, B2G was even booting in 10 seconds (flat). You just didn't see it with your own eyes. I suggest you revise your 'pure crap' opinion when you actually see the OS running in front of you. If this was a troll (feature phones? are you kidding me? We're talking about a phone that can really browse the web, here), I don't know what to say. Otherwise, you're just full of FUD. Disclaimer: I have only used the Keon. I don't have any experience with the ZTE or another one, but I'm still pretty confident they're not 'pure crap and a total waste of money'.
      - camus2 13y ago
        I tried the ZTE model. Honestly at that price,it's a scam,especially when for the same price you can get an Android 2.3.X phone,which has a browser and all the apps you'd ever want...
- webwielder 13y ago
  Speaking of the first iPhone and the first Android phones in the same breath is very insulting to the iPhone.
- OlavHN 13y ago
  I guess you're running the version that shipped over a year ago. Try switching to one of geeksphones other update channels on downloads.geeksphone.com. I've been dogfooding for a year now and its getting more plesant all the time! If it's not your main device - try nightly!
10feet 13y ago
Why is it unusable? Is it too slow to work? The good thing is that this will improve, even the cheapest processors will get faster.
- ajarmoniuk 13y ago
  The system is still extremely buggy. It closes in mid-writing-a-text message or mid-call. You expect this behaviour from a toy, but not a phone. Mind you, to people in emerging markets, it is a tool, not a toy, even if they only pay $25 for it. To these people, it's a lot of money. The hardware is very slow. It is too slow to render HTML5, which is especially hard when you have to type on the touch screen. The problem is that the system lags quite long after you touch the screen, so you are a few letters ahead of what is on the screen. There is no feedback. So, to me, Mozilla is really disconnected from reality if they think this could work.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    I love what Mozilla is doing and I'm tempted to move everything possible to Mozilla. I love the idea of ruthlessly developing for low end systems rather than just assuming everyone has 1 GHz and 1GB. I hope designers and coders enjoy the challenge of working with such limited systems. I tried to use Paypal website on an iPhone 4 yesterday. It was painfully slow. It was loading a bunch o stuff that I just didn't need or want. Horrible experience.
    - ajarmoniuk 13y ago
      I dream of having an iPhone 4. I guess it's subjective what you call slow.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        No, that's the point. This ridiculously overpowered phone was cripppled by PayPal's website. The phone slowed to a crawl. The website was loading odd stuff and doing weird things.
    - 13y ago
asadotzler 13y ago
We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0, but even with everything we think we can do there, a $25 phone is not going to feel like what you're used to. No one is claiming that it will. To understand why that's OK, imagine that you gave up your hero phone and spent a couple of years using a $50 feature phone over 2.5G. And then picked up a Firefox OS smartphone for about $25 and compared them. We can and will beat the feature phone experience for billions of people who are or will soon be ready to make the leap from feature phones to smartphones and who won't be served by the high cost of iOS and Android devices. They will have access to a comfortable phone with real web browsing, popular apps, an onscreen keyboard, cameras, notifications, etc, and if we're effective, a great experience that's affordable enough to help them move to this modern online era well before they otherwise might have. While the big guys are fighting over upgrades for the 4th and 5th generation smartphone users, we're figuring out how to get the next 4 billion people online with their first smartphone. Maybe we're crazy. I remember a lot of people telling us we were crazy to think we could dethrone Microsoft's browser monopoly. I'm an optimist. I think we're just crazy enough to pull it off. I think the world is counting on us.
- Pacabel 13y ago
  Users in richer nations upgrading to newer generations of Android and iOS devices has resulted in a huge number of used devices ending up in developing nations. These devices are extremely inexpensive, yet still quite capable. How are Firefox OS and these near-unusable devices supposed to compete with the imported used Android and iOS devices that are far more capable? When somebody in a developing nation can get a 2 or 3 year old device for $25, and it runs Android or iOS, and it gives a pretty good experience, I just don't see why they'd subject themselves to the comparatively poor experience of a equivalently priced Firefox OS device that gives a worse experience. And it wasn't Firefox that "dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly". It was very clearly Chrome's doing, thanks to the 40%+ share of the market it now holds. Firefox played second fiddle, only ever capturing approximately 30% of the market at its peak. With Firefox likely accounting for less than 20% of all browser users today, it's even more apparent that Chrome is mostly responsible for IE's loss of popularity.
  - 13y ago

by 4ad 13y ago

I have seen a $80 Firefox OS phone. The ZTE Open. I think it was $80, maybe it was 80EUR. It's unusable. Completely unusable. I can't fathom how a $25 phone works.

muro 13y ago

I have the Keon (https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/dev_phone https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/dev_phone) here. It's not good - I could say it's directly manufactured electronic waste, but that would be rude, so I won't. The first iPhone and android phones were better - more than 5 years ago.

idlewan 13y ago
I have the Keon. It is perfectly fine for my usage (mostly texts and light browsing), and fast enough in most default apps. I am also quite impressed by how fluid applications from the market are, Cut the rope included (I expected it to have very crappy framerate, but no). My HTC Hero (which is totally obsolete by now - you can't upgrade Android phones once the manufacturer released other phones and doesn't care anymore) is only fluid on the home screen. Everything else (even the Play store!) is slow and laggy. I can't play most games and can't install most apps on the Hero (armv6 means no Firefox, no Telegram, no 'anything using jni'). So I strongly disagree: the Keon is good enough, and the first Android phones were NOT better (you seem spoiled, high-end user! Just because it's not as fast as $400 phones does not mean it can't be interesting).
- camus2 13y ago
  sorry,you cant honestly recommand that phone.It's pure crap and a total waste of money.I suggest people looking for cheap feature phones to buy some old midlet based nokia/lg/sony.They do what a phone is supposed to do and they do it right,unlike Firefox os based phones which are pure crap. HTML5 based os need a lot of processing power,webos already proved it in the past. That's why firefox os will fail,it's not designed for lowend devices.
  - idlewan 13y ago
    Have you actually used a Firefox OS phone? You seem like you can't conceive that html apps on a FirefoxOS phone can be just as fast as any good app on another phone. If you tried Cordova/Phonegap on Android and didn't find the performance adequate, if you tried a web view on iOS and didn't find the performance adequate, just don't take the shortcut of believing that you would get the same inadequate performance on Firefox OS. The whole stack is different. HTML5 based os need a lot of processing power,webos already proved it in the past. WebOS and its fate proves nothing regarding the performance of mozilla's OS. That's why firefox os will fail,it's not designed for lowend devices. It IS designed for lowend devices. My Keon boots more than 3 times faster than my HTC Hero. In its early days, B2G was even booting in 10 seconds (flat). You just didn't see it with your own eyes. I suggest you revise your 'pure crap' opinion when you actually see the OS running in front of you. If this was a troll (feature phones? are you kidding me? We're talking about a phone that can really browse the web, here), I don't know what to say. Otherwise, you're just full of FUD. Disclaimer: I have only used the Keon. I don't have any experience with the ZTE or another one, but I'm still pretty confident they're not 'pure crap and a total waste of money'.
    - camus2 13y ago
      I tried the ZTE model. Honestly at that price,it's a scam,especially when for the same price you can get an Android 2.3.X phone,which has a browser and all the apps you'd ever want...
webwielder 13y ago
Speaking of the first iPhone and the first Android phones in the same breath is very insulting to the iPhone.
OlavHN 13y ago
I guess you're running the version that shipped over a year ago. Try switching to one of geeksphones other update channels on downloads.geeksphone.com. I've been dogfooding for a year now and its getting more plesant all the time! If it's not your main device - try nightly!

10feet 13y ago

Why is it unusable? Is it too slow to work? The good thing is that this will improve, even the cheapest processors will get faster.

ajarmoniuk 13y ago
The system is still extremely buggy. It closes in mid-writing-a-text message or mid-call. You expect this behaviour from a toy, but not a phone. Mind you, to people in emerging markets, it is a tool, not a toy, even if they only pay $25 for it. To these people, it's a lot of money. The hardware is very slow. It is too slow to render HTML5, which is especially hard when you have to type on the touch screen. The problem is that the system lags quite long after you touch the screen, so you are a few letters ahead of what is on the screen. There is no feedback. So, to me, Mozilla is really disconnected from reality if they think this could work.
- DanBC 13y ago
  I love what Mozilla is doing and I'm tempted to move everything possible to Mozilla. I love the idea of ruthlessly developing for low end systems rather than just assuming everyone has 1 GHz and 1GB. I hope designers and coders enjoy the challenge of working with such limited systems. I tried to use Paypal website on an iPhone 4 yesterday. It was painfully slow. It was loading a bunch o stuff that I just didn't need or want. Horrible experience.
  - ajarmoniuk 13y ago
    I dream of having an iPhone 4. I guess it's subjective what you call slow.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      No, that's the point. This ridiculously overpowered phone was cripppled by PayPal's website. The phone slowed to a crawl. The website was loading odd stuff and doing weird things.
  - 13y ago

asadotzler 13y ago

We've made major strides since Firefox OS 1.0, but even with everything we think we can do there, a $25 phone is not going to feel like what you're used to. No one is claiming that it will. To understand why that's OK, imagine that you gave up your hero phone and spent a couple of years using a $50 feature phone over 2.5G. And then picked up a Firefox OS smartphone for about $25 and compared them. We can and will beat the feature phone experience for billions of people who are or will soon be ready to make the leap from feature phones to smartphones and who won't be served by the high cost of iOS and Android devices. They will have access to a comfortable phone with real web browsing, popular apps, an onscreen keyboard, cameras, notifications, etc, and if we're effective, a great experience that's affordable enough to help them move to this modern online era well before they otherwise might have. While the big guys are fighting over upgrades for the 4th and 5th generation smartphone users, we're figuring out how to get the next 4 billion people online with their first smartphone. Maybe we're crazy. I remember a lot of people telling us we were crazy to think we could dethrone Microsoft's browser monopoly. I'm an optimist. I think we're just crazy enough to pull it off. I think the world is counting on us.

Pacabel 13y ago
Users in richer nations upgrading to newer generations of Android and iOS devices has resulted in a huge number of used devices ending up in developing nations. These devices are extremely inexpensive, yet still quite capable. How are Firefox OS and these near-unusable devices supposed to compete with the imported used Android and iOS devices that are far more capable? When somebody in a developing nation can get a 2 or 3 year old device for $25, and it runs Android or iOS, and it gives a pretty good experience, I just don't see why they'd subject themselves to the comparatively poor experience of a equivalently priced Firefox OS device that gives a worse experience. And it wasn't Firefox that "dethroned Microsoft's browser monopoly". It was very clearly Chrome's doing, thanks to the 40%+ share of the market it now holds. Firefox played second fiddle, only ever capturing approximately 30% of the market at its peak. With Firefox likely accounting for less than 20% of all browser users today, it's even more apparent that Chrome is mostly responsible for IE's loss of popularity.
- 13y ago