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Ouch: The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, h

Ouch: The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, have you seen how cheap it is? It's $35. Off contract. That's like, really cheap. The Bad •The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the Cloud FX, and most of the device's really serious problems come from running software on hardware that feels well below the minimum spec. •The software (again). •The keyboard—No multitouch, no auto correct, no copy/paste. Press "Q" and "P" at the same time and the keyboard registers "Y." This ruins e-mail, searching, texting, typing URLs, and lots of other stuff. •The memory—The phone constantly runs out of memory and can't multitask. Critical background features like the alarm and checking e-mail don't work because the phone is always out of memory. •The screen—The viewing angles are terrible, and in landscape the shimmery-ness of the display is headache-inducing. •The storage—There isn't any. •The modem—You get Edge data. No 3G. Don't even ask about 4G. •The camera—Pictures look more like impressionist watercolor paintings rather than scene recreations. •The build quality—Ultra-cheap, ultra-plasticky build quality. •The performance—Performance is really inconsistent, but it ranges from moderately slow to I-think-I-need-to-reboot-this slow. •It can't keep time. There's no battery backup for the time, so if the phone resets or runs out of battery, the time defaults to last century. This silently breaks all apps that use a secure connection. •There's no GPS. •Firefox crashes all the time. The Ugly •Anyone who had this as their first smartphone would swear off smartphones forever.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Much of the bad is cultural. Americans are impatient with devices, and feel frustration/anger when they don't get instant gratification. Others are more adaptable, more patient, and content to learn to use the device as it must be used to work correctly.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Job would smash this phone, at least he would only be out $35.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Most of the world lives with dumb phones and don't dissolve into childish fits. How to explain that?
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Save $5 and get a phone that actually works. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004ZLV4JG/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1412865984&sr=8-1&keywords=iphone+3g&condition=used http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004ZLV4JG/ref=sr_1_1... Edit: I want FFOS to succeed, pretending that this phone is usable will not help that goal.
      - Mikeb85 12y ago
        That phone sells for 500+ in the third world...
        happyscrappy 12y ago
        Sounds like a business opportunity.
        Mikeb85 12y ago
        For many it is...
    - cwyers 12y ago
      That's just it, though. If a "smartphone" offers a worse webbrowsing experience than a "dumb phone" with Opera Mobile that runs well on its resource-constrained host, why buy the smartphone?
    - themechanic 12y ago
      Most of the 3rd world lives with dumb phones that work well for the tasks they are designed to perform which are to make calls and send text messages. The device in question is not able to perform any of the above named tasks without running into problems. This would frustrate anyone no matter where they live
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's weird how Americans are apparently the only group that it's perfectly acceptable to criticize in completely malicious and baseless ways. I'm an American, and while there's much wrong with my country and its people, you are full of shit here.
- undergroundhero 12y ago
  The phone performs poorly, and the excuse is to blame the "impatience" of Americans? This comment reads like a sarcastic "It's not a bug, it's a feature." If the phone is terrible compared to the competition, people aren't going to be patient and adaptable--they're going to buy the competition.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    There's competition at that price?
bobajeff 12y ago
From that little snippet I'd say it doesn't sound like Firefox OS was tested very well on the hardware before this phone was released. Which is a real shame since one of the main differentiators I've been reading about is how much better it run on low-end devices than android. If I were Mozilla I'd think about finding another selling point. Maybe they should rethink the product. I remember when they were first talking about it, it was going to be able to get around the carrier/OEM update problem that Android has using their layered software architecture. That fell through quickly after launch and now not only is OS not being updated and the browser isn't either. Meanwhile, Android is slowly fixing it's update problem and have already worked around it by putting much of the updates into the Play Services API's. I thought the best selling point of FFOS was going to be branding control as it was originally going to be a white label product with only the code name Boot2Gecko and let all the branding be handled by manufacturers. But it looks like Mozilla gave up on that strategy. I'm guessing because carriers or manufacturers demanded a brand to sell. I think a workable strategy for Mozilla would be to build a good App Store for Android using their FFOS runtime/API's. Really pour over the user experience. Make fans of the users. Then work with phone manufacturers and carriers on bundling it.
- jeena 12y ago
  Oh how I hate the fact that while I was buying my Alcatel One Touch Fire in Poland last year I was already reading about FxOS 1.3 in the making, now I read about 2.1, but ... When I bought it 1.0.1 was installed, half a year later when they bumped it to 1.1.1 then I was really hopefull to get 1.2 but Alcatel and the polish Telekom wouldn't release it because they said the quality is not good enough, but they are working together with Mozilla on releasing 1.3. I've been waiting ever since, no sign of any update. I asked in the #b2g IRC channel what is up with that and nobody would tell me anything. I have an app in their marketplace https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/ https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/ it was even featured for a couple of weeks, and even though I could upgrade manually I need to stay on 1.1.1 because all the users of the app are still on 1.1.1, think of all the wasted(?) work everybody is doing which will (probably) never reach the users unless they buy a new devise. I really like the idea behind Firefox OS, but I am really disappointed how it is turning out, and I have no plans to buy a new FxOS phone any time soon, at least not before this particular thing has been fixed.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Much of the bad is cultural. Americans are impatient with devices, and feel frustration/anger when they don't get instant gratification. Others are more adaptable, more patient, and content to learn to use the device as it must be used to work correctly.

happyscrappy 12y ago
Job would smash this phone, at least he would only be out $35.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Most of the world lives with dumb phones and don't dissolve into childish fits. How to explain that?
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Save $5 and get a phone that actually works. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004ZLV4JG/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1412865984&sr=8-1&keywords=iphone+3g&condition=used http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004ZLV4JG/ref=sr_1_1... Edit: I want FFOS to succeed, pretending that this phone is usable will not help that goal.
    - Mikeb85 12y ago
      That phone sells for 500+ in the third world...
      - happyscrappy 12y ago
        Sounds like a business opportunity.
        Mikeb85 12y ago
        For many it is...
  - cwyers 12y ago
    That's just it, though. If a "smartphone" offers a worse webbrowsing experience than a "dumb phone" with Opera Mobile that runs well on its resource-constrained host, why buy the smartphone?
  - themechanic 12y ago
    Most of the 3rd world lives with dumb phones that work well for the tasks they are designed to perform which are to make calls and send text messages. The device in question is not able to perform any of the above named tasks without running into problems. This would frustrate anyone no matter where they live
mikeash 12y ago
It's weird how Americans are apparently the only group that it's perfectly acceptable to criticize in completely malicious and baseless ways. I'm an American, and while there's much wrong with my country and its people, you are full of shit here.
undergroundhero 12y ago
The phone performs poorly, and the excuse is to blame the "impatience" of Americans? This comment reads like a sarcastic "It's not a bug, it's a feature." If the phone is terrible compared to the competition, people aren't going to be patient and adaptable--they're going to buy the competition.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  There's competition at that price?

bobajeff 12y ago

From that little snippet I'd say it doesn't sound like Firefox OS was tested very well on the hardware before this phone was released. Which is a real shame since one of the main differentiators I've been reading about is how much better it run on low-end devices than android. If I were Mozilla I'd think about finding another selling point. Maybe they should rethink the product. I remember when they were first talking about it, it was going to be able to get around the carrier/OEM update problem that Android has using their layered software architecture. That fell through quickly after launch and now not only is OS not being updated and the browser isn't either. Meanwhile, Android is slowly fixing it's update problem and have already worked around it by putting much of the updates into the Play Services API's. I thought the best selling point of FFOS was going to be branding control as it was originally going to be a white label product with only the code name Boot2Gecko and let all the branding be handled by manufacturers. But it looks like Mozilla gave up on that strategy. I'm guessing because carriers or manufacturers demanded a brand to sell. I think a workable strategy for Mozilla would be to build a good App Store for Android using their FFOS runtime/API's. Really pour over the user experience. Make fans of the users. Then work with phone manufacturers and carriers on bundling it.

jeena 12y ago
Oh how I hate the fact that while I was buying my Alcatel One Touch Fire in Poland last year I was already reading about FxOS 1.3 in the making, now I read about 2.1, but ... When I bought it 1.0.1 was installed, half a year later when they bumped it to 1.1.1 then I was really hopefull to get 1.2 but Alcatel and the polish Telekom wouldn't release it because they said the quality is not good enough, but they are working together with Mozilla on releasing 1.3. I've been waiting ever since, no sign of any update. I asked in the #b2g IRC channel what is up with that and nobody would tell me anything. I have an app in their marketplace https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/ https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/ it was even featured for a couple of weeks, and even though I could upgrade manually I need to stay on 1.1.1 because all the users of the app are still on 1.1.1, think of all the wasted(?) work everybody is doing which will (probably) never reach the users unless they buy a new devise. I really like the idea behind Firefox OS, but I am really disappointed how it is turning out, and I have no plans to buy a new FxOS phone any time soon, at least not before this particular thing has been fixed.