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firefox phones for devs are a scam. i have several in the drawer. all beyond useless. i use the emulator mostly. when i have to test multitouch or perf, i use
by gcb0 12y ago
firefox phones for devs are a scam.
i have several in the drawer. all beyond useless.
i use the emulator mostly. when i have to test multitouch or perf, i use an old-top-of-the-line-android that cost me $50ish on craigslist. why? because all the official firefox phones are useless. crappy touch screen. etc.
yeah, they say we should use the device people are using, but the point is, nobody uses them if not for firefox devs! also no hardware drivers when you want to flash some other kernel. just like with a android phone repurposed. so, why???
and if anyone thinks real people buy those, i challenge you. take a plane to mexico where the alcatel one is even advertised on billboards... and buy one. i tried. if you manage to find one at any store, i will reimburse your trip. they dont even sell it! nobody buys it.
in the end, those phones only secure a tiny margin for a manufacturer that would otherwise fail on the android ecosystem. a small royalty fee/donation for mozilla. and lots and lots of wasted time for the dev comunity having to document how to work around the annoyances and binary blob crap of yet another cheap phone.
not to mention the environmental impact of producing yet more phones that will not be used for a few years and then be disposed.
- fabrice_d 12y agoright... We are doing the Flame to address these issues: better hardware, better update story so they are durable for developers. These are very decent devices, fast enough, front and back camera that will let you do video calls with webrtc, etc. Oh, and you're flat wrong about the "no one buys them" and that could cost you a lot ;)
- gcb0 12y agoah, you mean app devs. so it is even worse, i dont think app devs should buy the phone just for development. that is what the emulator is for. dont be like apple. my complain is for gaia devs, etc. i dont think this phone will allow kernel hacking any easier than repurposing an android phone. or the awful current firefox phones, that still cant be easily bought... it is 100% the same outcome as the current phones when they launched. why insist on a mistake? either go low tier with fully open specs and drivers, or go top tier to get US adoption, which then leads to mid tier adoption. starting wit mid tier, failing, and insisting on it a 4th time... this is just wrong any way you see it. that is way i assume it is a scam. someone is profiting from that. there is no other rational explanation.
- adl 12y agoI bought a Alcatel with Firefox OS a month ago (Movistar here in Mexico) , I gave it to my father. He is very happy with it.
- gcb0 12y agoso you must be a magician because if you go to e site (which does not work on firefox mobile), it says it is not selling and ask you to go to a waiting list. when i was there, i went to all movistar stores i could find (one per city block) and none had it. i ended up finding one in that part of mexico city, forgot the name, near the chinatown-street that has lots of electronic stores... anyway, there was a movistar store there, inside a parking lot, that had ONE open box alcatel one...
- adl 12y agoI went to a Movistar located in a nearby mall ('Galerias Mty' in Monterrey) during my lunch break. They had the Alcatel on display, along all the other cell phones. Took me 30min to buy, mostly because of the activation.