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I have the ZTE phone to play around with - I got it this past fall just for kicks. It's a great phone for the price, but that's also a very low price point. Fi

I have the ZTE phone to play around with - I got it this past fall just for kicks. It's a great phone for the price, but that's also a very low price point. FirefoxOS is 'ready' for prime time use if and only if you have relatively low requirements of your phone. It can do most basic tasks by virtue of the fact that it uses mobile websites as if they were native apps, but the experience is not yet comparable to Android. I think it will get there soon, but right now I would only get one if you are very comfortable being an incredibly early adopter, and understand what kind of adjustment that requires on your part.

ehPReth 12y ago
Have you upgraded it past the initial build? If so, how far have you gotten?
- WhiteDawn 12y ago
  I personally have been able to get it all the way up to 1.4 on my ZTE Open. It's a mess to do, you need to build the OS from source then splice it into the boot file provided by ZTE and edit some init scripts. It runs perfectly fine after that but I can't comment on stability since I only use it for app testing
soapdog 12y ago
Just some clarification. Firefox OS doesn't use just mobile websites. It uses web technologies to build apps. You can have mobile websites as apps but you can also have plain packaged apps that live in your phone. Mobile websites that use appcache will work offline and be indistinguishable from a normal app after they cache the content. Packaged apps are just apps that are stored on the phone just like on other platforms. People need to be aware that Firefox OS is targeted at emerging markets where most people are still using feature phones. In these scenarios, the cheapest Android phones are still expensive to a large chunk of the population. Our Firefox OS phones are built to be a first smartphone for people that are migrating from feature phones. Democratization of internet access is one of our main objectives with Firefox OS. Bringing the next billion people online. The idea is not to poach users from iOS and high end Android devices but to offer an affordable entry level smartphone that the common people can buy which has a good quality and performance. And yes, there are a lot of features that still need to be implemented but then again we're building it all in the open and all the source code is on github http://github.com/mozilla-b2g/ http://github.com/mozilla-b2g/ If you count the smartphone platforms with devices available to purchase right now, we're the only one that is developed in the open where anyone can contribute and see everything. There are still many steps to go but think for a bit in what type of world you want five years from now. A place where walled gardens are king, where platforms are all proprietary or with closed development and where you need to ask permission before publishing an app. Or a place where we still have the freedom of the web where anyone can publish anything. Where web based apps work with different vendors platforms (as in Hacker News will open in Firefox, Chrome, Safari all the same. The WebAPIs are being standarized and are open for all vendors to implement). So, as I said, I agree with you that we still need to implement a lot of features but with the points made above you may be able to agree that we have a place and time now to offering a great product to our markets.

ehPReth 12y ago

Have you upgraded it past the initial build? If so, how far have you gotten?

WhiteDawn 12y ago
I personally have been able to get it all the way up to 1.4 on my ZTE Open. It's a mess to do, you need to build the OS from source then splice it into the boot file provided by ZTE and edit some init scripts. It runs perfectly fine after that but I can't comment on stability since I only use it for app testing

soapdog 12y ago

Just some clarification. Firefox OS doesn't use just mobile websites. It uses web technologies to build apps. You can have mobile websites as apps but you can also have plain packaged apps that live in your phone. Mobile websites that use appcache will work offline and be indistinguishable from a normal app after they cache the content. Packaged apps are just apps that are stored on the phone just like on other platforms. People need to be aware that Firefox OS is targeted at emerging markets where most people are still using feature phones. In these scenarios, the cheapest Android phones are still expensive to a large chunk of the population. Our Firefox OS phones are built to be a first smartphone for people that are migrating from feature phones. Democratization of internet access is one of our main objectives with Firefox OS. Bringing the next billion people online. The idea is not to poach users from iOS and high end Android devices but to offer an affordable entry level smartphone that the common people can buy which has a good quality and performance. And yes, there are a lot of features that still need to be implemented but then again we're building it all in the open and all the source code is on github http://github.com/mozilla-b2g/ http://github.com/mozilla-b2g/ If you count the smartphone platforms with devices available to purchase right now, we're the only one that is developed in the open where anyone can contribute and see everything. There are still many steps to go but think for a bit in what type of world you want five years from now. A place where walled gardens are king, where platforms are all proprietary or with closed development and where you need to ask permission before publishing an app. Or a place where we still have the freedom of the web where anyone can publish anything. Where web based apps work with different vendors platforms (as in Hacker News will open in Firefox, Chrome, Safari all the same. The WebAPIs are being standarized and are open for all vendors to implement). So, as I said, I agree with you that we still need to implement a lot of features but with the points made above you may be able to agree that we have a place and time now to offering a great product to our markets.