9 ms·

Mozilla overhauls Firefox smartphone plan to focus on quality, not cost

136 points by derf_ 11y ago

minthd 11y ago
If that's the plan, won't it make much more sense to start from open-source android and move from there ?
- Touche 11y ago
  They already did that.
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  Only if there's a realistic way to put emphasis on the web part again at some point. Otherwise they'll just become yet another Android-alike (effectively handing control over the platform to the Android developers at Google). The nice thing about web technologies is that there isn't a single party that controls the APIs. I don't know any other comprehensive API collection with this property (POSIX is in the same ball park, but which POSIX-only application is mass market compatible these days?)
- joelthelion 11y ago
  Patents may be part of the reason for this.
Kelly2 11y ago
Can someone shed some light on why they would now allow android but not native app(aka not JS based)? It seems strange.
- janjongboom 11y ago
  There is an apkjs IRC channel on mozilla [1] so they might cross-compile Android apps via emscripten to asm.js. Couldn't get any info from moz when I asked around in that channel. [1] http://search.mibbit.com/networks/Mozilla/%23apkjs http://search.mibbit.com/networks/Mozilla/%23apkjs
- _random_ 11y ago
  That's part of their agenda. If they will let people easily use other languages, naturally only JS devs will use JS.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  Could be pretty cool if they allowed Rust apps.
jay_kyburz 11y ago
Something I don't see talked about too much, but what I think could be the most exciting thing about the Firefox phone, is that a web app (hosted on the web) could have full access the the dialer, sms, camera, and all of a phones capabilities. I think then you might see a whole range of independent homescreens and app suites developed and offer some well designed alternatives. I'm a nexus 4 user and I really don't like all the basics. The dialer, contact list, messaging. I think they are confusing and difficult to navigate.
newscracker 11y ago
This sounds like a good change. Hopefully it would bring in a really good experience, not just a clone of the Android One series that compromises on hardware because of price. Quoting from the email, "This will be the phone that you want to use, and will use every day." For this to be true, these are some of the key things for Mozilla to focus on: * The responsiveness of the UI. * A good camera (at least 5MP). * A decent amount of memory to hold multiple apps (in dormant mode) and reduce startup times of recently used apps. Running Android apps may be a good interim strategy while apps targeted and optimized for Firefox phones are developed. But this assumes that the phones can run them well. Otherwise it would just backfire completely, leaving Firefox phones as useless devices. I can't wait for a well performing Firefox phone that's widely available (even if that means costing a few hundred dollars or equivalent)! It'd be great if Firefox can come to fourth place or (gasp) third place in the mobile OS wars.
- pavlov 11y ago
  Third place is going to take a lot of work. Microsoft sold 8.6 million Lumia phones last quarter. The only way I see it happening would be if Mozilla gets some big partner in e.g. China to push Firefox phones.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    And Microsoft is only able to sell as many thanks to Nokia's brand recognition prior to buying them (Nokia was selling 95% of all of the Windows Phones before Microsoft acquired the phone division - which just shows what a huge impact Nokia's brand name had on Windows Phone, and without it WP would be at <0.5% market share).
    - jfuhrman 11y ago
      The phones sold last quarter were not branded Nokia.
      - sirkneeland 11y ago
        New Lumia models introduced were branded Microsoft. Previous Lumia models launched as Nokias (830 etc) remain Nokia branded.
bobajeff 11y ago
My idea of a quality Smartphone: Small (ipod mini or nano sized), Durable and Water proof, long lasting battery, E-inc (or similar) display, Able to play music while using navigation and Able to play music while browsing the web. If Mozilla can put this phone together I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
- Retr0spectrum 11y ago
  I'm not sure something that small would be useful for many "smart" tasks. I recon about 3.5 inches is the sweet spot.
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    Sure it would. It works for the iPod mini and smart watches.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    There's no way 3.5" is the "sweet spot" these days. Maybe for primary school students, at most. Otherwise kids want phones with larger screens these days, too. I'd say 4.3" should be the minimum for just about anyone. Phones are more compact than the days of iPhone 1, and most of them are 16:9 now, which would make 3.5" way too cramped for using the keyboard.
- TylerE 11y ago
  Eink sucks for anything other than ebooks. Way too slow for browsing.
  - bradjohnson 11y ago
    I think just browsing can be done at a reasonable speed, but I would think that app developers would be put off by the restrictions that e-ink implies.
- bradjohnson 11y ago
  Is there some e-ink display that can produce more than 64 colors in development? Even if they make the OS look decent with that small of a pallette, I don't think that the e-ink display will be attractive to people if your webpage rendering looks like garbage.
tomc1985 11y ago
It feels like they barely tried. There's been ZERO ways to acquire this phone in the USA! Why is it so hard to sell an unlocked smartphone direct to consumers in the USA?
kumarm 11y ago
Mozilla at one point had momentum before Chrome came up and wasted it while letting Firefox become slow and memory hog (This was before Chrome came out, I am not commenting on latest versions). I don't see Mozilla turning around because they are trying to be followers where both Apple and Google are executing well enough at least to maintain Status quo. Why go after Smart Phone Market while at best you can be 3rd or 4th best (with less than 5% market share)?
veeti 11y ago
Trying to shoehorn a performance hungry HTML5 OS on low-end phones was a complete waste of time. Just read this review of the $35 Firefox phone [1]: it's completely unusable to the point that even typing is difficult. What an embarrassment. I bought the mid-spec Flame developer device out of curiosity, and it's not much better. Everything feels slow, sluggish and unresponsive. Even Android 2.x was better. My quad-core i7 desktop still occasionally struggles to render the latest and greatest HTML5 stuff at 60 fps. How on earth do they expect a phone to do the same? [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-os-phone-how-bad-could-it-be/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-...
- wwweston 11y ago
  My experience is out of date, but I'm a little surprised to hear this. I have a Geeksphone Keon that I played with for a lot of 2013, and it wasn't half bad. Ironically my biggest complaint was that web browsing would bog down on pages with a lot of content... and I think that might have been a memory thing. Most of the phone/app stuff seemed fine (except the maps application, which was nigh unusable for me, not sure if that was CPU bound, memory bound, bandwidth bound, or just the wrong mapping service).
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Lots of "content" more like it. Best i can tell, JS can be a serious memory hog. And high "content" sites invariably come with trackers tracking trackers tracking trackers.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
  I'm halfway through the article, and I have to say, I've never read a more brutal review. > The other really weird thing missing is any kind of battery backup for the time. If the phone loses power, the time and date gets reset, leaving it looking like an old VCR blinking "12:00." This seems insane for a device released just a few months ago... when you can get a lumia, which is very reasonable, for just 5$ more, why would anyone bother with this?
pekk 11y ago
So Mozilla's clever idea to attack the low end of the market outside the US has failed and now they want to pivot. The rub is that now they are competing with Android and iPhone, which have years of head start and gigantic app stores. They aren't pursuing compatibility with those existing app stores, so that will be a disadvantage. And they don't have resources like there are behind Windows Phone. Even to take a niche, they need a remarkable positive differentiator. As the quote in the article says, "In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Rhetoric like "change the world" isn't it - the specifics matter. "Embrace the web" isn't a differentiator when all Smartphones can browse websites. I welcome you to find in that article anything but a few planned features which might just keep Firefox OS alive without necessarily giving it a competitive advantage. After watching a few years, I'm not sure even Mozilla knows what the differentiator will be to consumers, because what I always see from them in this kind of press-release piece are vague phrases like "the open web". So for years I have been a little confused about exactly what they are trying to do. A possible clue is that whenever you drill down on projects to which these catchphrases have been applied, what it really boils down to is more Javascript. Please try an experiment: every time you see "the open web" mentioned by Mozilla, see if the same sentence makes as much sense substituting "Javascript." For years this has bothered me because "the open web" does not literally mean "Javascript," yet Mozilla and its fans consistently equivocate between the two. What I realize now is that this isn't because Mozilla is confused about the difference, it's because their core allegiance is to Brandan Eich's brainchild and phrases like "open web" are just a chosen mode of evangelizing Javascript. Maybe Mozilla doesn't know exactly what an all-Javascript world will exactly bring to consumers, but they want it anyway because that is their understanding of their mission. The problem with this is that Javascript advocacy doesn't necessarily have a lot of benefit to consumers or even to programmers other than diehard Javascript fans. To be plain, basically nobody gives a rat's ass if their phone uses more Javascript than Java. It doesn't make anything more open to use Javascript rather than other technologies, openness is a matter of licensing and maybe development process. In practice you still end up with a lot of Javascript APIs specific to Firefox OS (and therefore a collection of apps).
- omouse 11y ago
  I don't know how you're missing it but apps on phones are like desktop software vs the web. Mozilla wants to win that battle and make it possible to use the open web on multiple devices. You won't be limited to a particular OS and APIs, you can just use FireFox OS or the browser and you're good to go. Using JavaScript is an alright decision especially when you have asm.js and you have TypeScript and flow if you want static typing or type annotations. The flaw in the plan is that no one has tried to get something like Google Docs working on Firefox OS/Mobile and then tried to tune and optimize performance until it worked properly. If they focused on getting heavy websites to load in under a second come hell or high water, they would have made the web browser king on the phone. Instead we have Facebook cutting out the browser by caching the content of news sites.
realrocker 11y ago
I really want Firefox OS to be a success. After working in AOSP firmware for last 5 years and dealing with vendor walled gardens, I wish there was a truly usable open source phone.
- seba_dos1 11y ago
  Firefox OS isn't any better than Android when it comes to vendor walled gardens. Mozilla doesn't enforce in any way any openness of the platform - it just provides the open OS. It might be more complete experience than what AOSP alone delivers, but it's still up to vendor to provide, or not, any freedom when it comes to usage of the device. Heck, your platform doesn't even need to be open to be able to market it with Firefox OS brand! They have a set of rules you have to fulfill, but basic stuff like unlocked bootloader isn't even part of them.
abrowne 11y ago
I used a Keon as my only phone for summer 2013 – summer 2014. Basic apps were good, but — ironically for a web-based phone — the browsing experience was my biggest negative. Not the actual page layout/etc. — that is just Gecko and worked fine if you didn't try to open too many tabs. The problem was the browser lacked basic features like find in page, sync, and adding search engines. I switched to a Moto E, and I think it actually lags a little more for things like opening the clock app, but I'm basically addicted to Fennec's reader view and sync. (The "system browser" in FxOS 3.0 is also a major regression on tab UX IMO.)
- hsivonen 11y ago
  I think the system browser in 3.x is a significant UX improvement. The old browser app always felt like trying to impose an Android-like world-view on a system where the system was supposed to be a browser all along.
  - abrowne 11y ago
    I get that and thought I would like it, but I guess I still use the (web) apps and the web browser quite differently. I hope further refinements change my mind! More specifically, I tend to open and close a lot of tabs, which involves more steps now, and I want new tabs to open in the background.
jackgavigan 11y ago
I've always thought that Mozilla's strategy with Firefox OS was very optimistic/ambitious. It was first conceived just as cheap Chinese Android smartphones were beginning to make inroads into developing markets[1]. In such markets, simply reducing the cost of the phone from $80 to $25 won't increase smartphone penetration as much as you might think because the cost of the phone itself comprises only a small part of the total cost of ownership - the customer still has to pay for a mobile data plan. That leaves the "open web" approach as the major differentiator between Firefox OS and Android. Whilst I'm a fan of open standards, I doubt the average consumer is going to care enough for Firefox OS to make inroads into Android's dominance of the low-cost smartphone market (in fact, I'd question whether they'll care at all). At this point, if I were on the Mozilla Foundation board, I think I'd be pushing for a cost-benefit assessment of continued investment into Firefox OS. 1: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424454/android-marches-on-east-africa/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424454/android-marches-...
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  Coincidentally, less than 24 hours later, this story crops up, demonstrating how different the mobile phone market is in developing markets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9604049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9604049
azinman2 11y ago
Sounds like they have no idea what to do now. Not having any apps is probably the biggest disadvantage that can't easily be undone. Android compatibility needs to be to the point where it's flawless for this to make any sense. Personally I'd rather see iOS compatibility but that's very unlikely to happen. Different idea: why not work on something like PhoneGap that's powered by Firefox? If you can create a super powerful framework/dev environment that rivals native (and uses all the smarts and resources of Mozilla to address all current flaws of these existing frameworks), then you could have devs building in a more cross platform & "open" manner. From there you might actually have enough apps compatible to run Firefox os, or better, have that not matter as much because you're what's underneath every app. I have a hard time seeing Mozilla make inroads at this point otherwise.
- mackey 11y ago
  I don't think the flaws in phone gap and other tools are things that Mozilla can fix, at least not without support from Google/Apple, who really have no incentive to help.
apayan 11y ago
This is a welcome change from Mozilla, but I think they should take it a step further and ditch Firefox OS completely. The original reason d'etre of Firefox OS was that it would run on lower spec'ed and cheaper hardware than Android could, but that's not an efficient use of their limited resources for a couple reasons: 1) Mozilla could contribute to Android to improve it's performance on cheaper hardware. 2) Moore's law is making powerful hardware more affordable for the world's poorest people, faster than Mozilla can get Firefox OS and an attractive app ecosystem off the ground. Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. Everyday, apps become more and more dependent on Google Play services, the proprietary set of libraries that Google controls on Android devices. Developers need an open version of Google Play Services (Mozilla Mobile Services?) and even a competitive app store (10% commission instead of 30%?). The natural next step would be to create their own distribution of Android and release it on quality hardware. Not only would they be furthering the cause of free software and open computing, but they would have a revenue stream to continue their mission.
- Istof 11y ago
  I was, and I am still looking forward to Firefox OS. Not because of the cheap devices, but because it is open, it's html apps and it isn't run by the same type of company that makes Android or iOS.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Is there a way they could build an Android-based OS that is open, and that facilitates open apps and data, as well as end-user control? What if they took over Cyangenmod or forked it?
- tdkl 11y ago
  > Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. This is cool and all, but history has shown that people somehow prefer Android with Google apps. Cyanogen has announced that they're taking Android back and all from Google and I wonder how it'll work out at the end. I wouldn't mind seeing the same thing from Mozilla or even more players, but the sad reality is that enthusiasts don't make revenue.
- 11y ago
throwaway12357 11y ago
I can't help but feel some "couch coach" desperation with Mozilla's confusion at where should they aim at. Google has Android which is open source but "spyware" prone and suffers from vendor incompetence/uninterest in updates -- in fact this will bite Google sooner or latter. While Apple's iOS is privacy aware but closed source and carries a huge price premium. On the other hand Mozilla is known for open source and for caring for privacy. Furthermore with Snowden's revelations, at least among the IT crowd, as well as governments, there is interest for a secure system. Give me a high-end phone [1] which focus on privacy. Something that supports a stack like Xposed and Xprivacy out of the box. Something whose baseband processor is decoupled from the other processors. And if possible the source code for the sensors or at least the ICD, so that you have an alternative to binary blobs. Give me something that supports encryption and can get consistent no hassle OTA updates. And make it with a compatibility layer to Android's apps [2] I'm all for open source, but Android just ends up being nothing but an headache. A better solution would be welcome. [1] just look at the OnePlus One for $350 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus_One http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus_One In fact Mozilla should have partnered with them. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29
- TylerE 11y ago
  Does iOS really carry a price premium? My experience, similar to the old Mac/PC debates, is the difference is actually minimal at most when you compare with actually equivalent hardware.
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    It only exist in the premium class, so in that sense, if you want iOS just for the iOS, you are stuck buying premium hardware. I do think iOS devices are generally a good deal (in the sense that they are worth the money),but that doesn't mean they are not premium nor premium priced. Quality costs money.
- pinaceae 11y ago
  so you want iOS, but don't want to pay for it. great market for Mozilla to break into!
Narishma 11y ago
I never understood their focus on cheap phones. Firefox OS (and web technologies in general) is a poor fit for low-spec devices.
Zigurd 11y ago
I have never understood the "we'll win at the lo-end" approach. Android was designed for lo-spec devices. ART has moved android a little bit away from that focus, and so has some bloat in Google's proprietary apps. But Android can still be tuned for and run on very modest hardware. Competing against Android on lo-spec hardware is not a winning plan. For the class of IoT devices that are capable of running Linux, Google thinks they can turn Android into a "headless" configuration that uses Android's runtime and base classes, presumably minus the UI classes. Android is, in fact, pretty darn efficient. And on top of all that, Mozilla thought a Web runtime could be made as efficient as a Java-ish runtime that has a very memory-efficient component architecture? That's just strange.
spitfire 11y ago
I'm still confused as to what Mozilla actually does. At one point they(or the company that spawned them) built a web browser that they sold. Then they were the non-profit offshoot of that keeping an open source browser alive. But now they're... erm... what is it exactly that they are? They're a non-profit that sells browser searches, or something. I'm confused.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ In short, they try to save the Internet from being run by a few corporations or governments. So, minus cape, they're trying to do superhero things that are often at odds with the biggest companies in the world. Whether they succeed in that with any given project is up for debate, of course. So far, Firefox phones have been a flop. Personally, I want one, because I care about privacy and I care about the open web, but I don't really want a shitty $25 phone. This news is good for me, but I don't know what it says for Mozilla's vision in the mobile market. I've heard people suggest that Android took a while to catch on...but, it really didn't. By the time Android had been on the market for a year, it was clear (to me, anyway) that it would become the dominant player for many of the same reasons Wintel became the dominant desktop platform. Firefox OS doesn't have much to show for the time they've been on the market. It was never even clear to me I could buy a "real" phone (i.e. not developer phone) in the US running FxOS.
andrepd 11y ago
Why not both? Choice is good, and unless there is a good reason for only being able to choose one, I'd say offer devices is various price ranges.
SwellJoe 11y ago
So, mobile devices are an aspirational purchase in many of the developing nations Mozilla was reportedly targeting with these devices. People buy phones that look like high end phones in the US, because that's part of what they want from a phone. I'm not saying low cost phones in developing nations aren't a good goal. That's a wonderful thing, and I think I can understand how the people at Mozilla, who almost always prioritize doing good over doing well, would make the mistake of thinking that building a phone that is good for people in the developing world would be a good way to start their mobile effort. But, and as much as I hate to say this because it reveals a crass consumerism that has infected the world and patient zero is the US, the reality is that modern phones are luxury items that need some of the trappings of luxury...even in developing nations, where they look to the west to define their fashion and trends. If Mozilla can't win a developed world market, they won't be able to convince people in developing nations that what they've built is worthwhile, especially when there are knockoff Android devices that only cost a few bucks more, which are much closer to what people in the developed world are using. I could see how it might even seem patronizing to the poorest folks. I don't know what Mozilla should do; I'm not a mobile mogul. But, I want a Firefox phone. I've wanted one since they announced they were making them. I want one a lot, actually. But, I don't want a shitty phone that's less powerful than my last three Android phones, no matter the price. It's also never been clear to me, as an American, where I can even buy a real FxOS phone. There are dev phones, but they seemed to always just be "sign up for our waiting list" or whatever, which is not something I really do.
tacojuan 11y ago
I have wanted these phones for the longest goddamn time. The LG or KDDI Fx0 was the coolest looking phone I have seen in the last 5 years. But it was unreasonably priced at nearly 400 USD I recently stumbled across the geeksphone revolution which actually seems to be a high-end phone and at a nice pricetag of less than 200 USD.
kozukumi 11y ago
So my comments the other day [1] were pretty to point then. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570
kozukumi 11y ago
So my comments the other day [1] were pretty to point then. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570
bikamonki 11y ago
Focus on one app: Whatsapp. Say this is the mid 90's and you want to make a dent on the mobile market. So you keep costs low and put a cheapo camera on the thing along a semi-decent mp3 player. But there is one big problem: your Konia 1 phone does not run SMS. Nobody buys the thingy. What went wrong? Oh, its quality, let's put a hi-end camera and try again! It's all about the apps that people use. Remember MS Office? Oh, nice Macs said the IT managers, do they run MS Office? Go cut a deal with Zucker and get Whatsapp for FFOS then the phones will sell.
- sanxiyn 11y ago
  They must be aware of this since LINE does run on Firefox OS. I think deal is in progress.
contingencies 11y ago
Mesh networking is the killer mobile app - FirefoxOS should focus on this, as it fits with their ethos. The developing world doesn't need telephones, they need secure and convenient means to transfer data wirelessly and code that works with sporadic, slow, shared connectivity. Frankly, they need crypto plus mesh networking. Make it a platform for privacy-controlled social networking, high scores, app updates ... it should differentiate far enough to win users. Basically, make it the hacker's choice ... then, you'll get applications, too. A cheap version without GSM or CDMA would be an option.
- TOMDM 11y ago
  Mesh networking + crypto seems to be an incredibly disruptive technology that I'm surprised hasn't seen wide market adoption. The technology obviously exists and works, as it has been shown being used by protesters or in disaster relief areas. Why has this not been proliferated world over, from developing countries to cheap internet providers? (Not calling anyone lazy or stupid, I'm legitimately curious as to what social, technical or legal roadblocks must be holding this tech back)
  - grizzles 11y ago
    I ran a mesh networking startup about 2 years ago. A few details about it are here: tricorder.org/eric/uplink.html. From my perspective, there are two main barriers: 1) It's hard to explain to customers who are used to the current ISP internet access paradigm. This barrier can be overcome. 2) Not only do you need to win customers, you need to win a critical mass of customers within a focused geographic area. #2 is very, very hard imo.
    - contingencies 11y ago
      First up, good job writing up your idea in hindsight. I think it differs slightly from mesh networking on mobiles with high latency transfer expectations / custom apps fairly significantly. You were trying to provide the internet as a service for free in real time, I think the killer app is actually embracing store and forward again. For problem #1, if it works at the consumer level then I think people don't really care about how it works. For #2, I think the current model of 'use free wifi from coffee shops, hotels, bars, restaurants' that seems globally dominant would work fine.
reeboo 11y ago
I would love it if someone would come along and offer an android experience while applying an value framework like the Mozilla manifesto. Not saying this has to be Mozilla, though it would make sense for them to do it.
chubs 11y ago
Rust could be a great platform to build a new mobile OS on. Non-garbage collected so it'd be fast and efficient on low-memory ARM devices. Just like Obj-C really gave iOS a headstart on java-based Android. Doubly-so if they want to continue to target the low-spec end of the market.
alexnewman 11y ago
The fact that ubuntu and mozilla are both launching open phone platforms that compete in exactly the same space baffles me. The fact that ubuntu has it's own browser based on blink, and firefox is convinced that all you need is a browser is just....
drewm1980 11y ago
Mozilla could make a rustphone where apps run 10X as fast as all that webby crap, never crash, and don't force the user into frequent hardware upgrades just to keep the UI responsive. Make smartphones that are as reliable as dumbphones.
throwaway41597 11y ago
There is room for FirefoxOS: - No performance regressions. Somehow, the blazing fast device I bought a couple of years ago now feels sluggish. Core apps should be timeless: the dialer, the keyboard, task switcher shouldn't be slower two years after purchase. - Graceful degradation. Websites have no easy way to detect how fast a device is, so they are built for the majority with a bias for the newest and fastest. The result is that cheap and old devices get obsoleted even for the simple stuff. If a $25 phone is as powerful as a 2000 computer, then let the developer feature-detect it and design for it. - Good permissions. I don't know the solution but there's a problem. Android's model is depressingly bad. iOS's is too dumbed-down to be trustworthy. Firefox's granularity is good to have but web developers seem to assume the user is always going to grant the permission. I always grunt at websites which want my position to find a store near me and display a blank page when I reject it. - Timely OS updates. Firefox already has a fast release cycle regardless of the desktop OS. Why can't mobile be the same? I believe kernel patches are less of an issue with web apps because the kernel isn't the first line defense. - Reasonably priced. The $100-200 range is already full of good Android devices. Just make deals with manufacturers to sell a Firefox version of those. They already sell dozens of different phones, so it should be feasible to convince them to add a couple identical devices with a different OS. FirefoxOS only needs one good device. - Security. Better sandbox the blackboxes (drivers and radio). Those were my pain points, but I'm willing to make sacrifices: - 60 FPS isn't that important for me. I care more about response time when I tap something. - Most animations/transitions won't be missed. Some add value but marginally so. Most are arbitrary and useless. - Most apps won't be missed. I only use a few. Apple is margin-driven. Google is ad-driven. They already cause pain to the consumer and market dominance will only make matters worse. They also are walled gardens so they cause pain to the developer. Mozilla is indeed in a similar position to that of the 2000s.

136 points by derf_ 11y ago

minthd 11y ago

If that's the plan, won't it make much more sense to start from open-source android and move from there ?

Touche 11y ago
They already did that.
pgeorgi 11y ago
Only if there's a realistic way to put emphasis on the web part again at some point. Otherwise they'll just become yet another Android-alike (effectively handing control over the platform to the Android developers at Google). The nice thing about web technologies is that there isn't a single party that controls the APIs. I don't know any other comprehensive API collection with this property (POSIX is in the same ball park, but which POSIX-only application is mass market compatible these days?)
joelthelion 11y ago
Patents may be part of the reason for this.

Kelly2 11y ago

Can someone shed some light on why they would now allow android but not native app(aka not JS based)? It seems strange.

janjongboom 11y ago
There is an apkjs IRC channel on mozilla [1] so they might cross-compile Android apps via emscripten to asm.js. Couldn't get any info from moz when I asked around in that channel. [1] http://search.mibbit.com/networks/Mozilla/%23apkjs http://search.mibbit.com/networks/Mozilla/%23apkjs
_random_ 11y ago
That's part of their agenda. If they will let people easily use other languages, naturally only JS devs will use JS.
higherpurpose 11y ago
Could be pretty cool if they allowed Rust apps.

jay_kyburz 11y ago

Something I don't see talked about too much, but what I think could be the most exciting thing about the Firefox phone, is that a web app (hosted on the web) could have full access the the dialer, sms, camera, and all of a phones capabilities. I think then you might see a whole range of independent homescreens and app suites developed and offer some well designed alternatives. I'm a nexus 4 user and I really don't like all the basics. The dialer, contact list, messaging. I think they are confusing and difficult to navigate.

newscracker 11y ago

This sounds like a good change. Hopefully it would bring in a really good experience, not just a clone of the Android One series that compromises on hardware because of price. Quoting from the email, "This will be the phone that you want to use, and will use every day." For this to be true, these are some of the key things for Mozilla to focus on: * The responsiveness of the UI. * A good camera (at least 5MP). * A decent amount of memory to hold multiple apps (in dormant mode) and reduce startup times of recently used apps. Running Android apps may be a good interim strategy while apps targeted and optimized for Firefox phones are developed. But this assumes that the phones can run them well. Otherwise it would just backfire completely, leaving Firefox phones as useless devices. I can't wait for a well performing Firefox phone that's widely available (even if that means costing a few hundred dollars or equivalent)! It'd be great if Firefox can come to fourth place or (gasp) third place in the mobile OS wars.

pavlov 11y ago
Third place is going to take a lot of work. Microsoft sold 8.6 million Lumia phones last quarter. The only way I see it happening would be if Mozilla gets some big partner in e.g. China to push Firefox phones.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  And Microsoft is only able to sell as many thanks to Nokia's brand recognition prior to buying them (Nokia was selling 95% of all of the Windows Phones before Microsoft acquired the phone division - which just shows what a huge impact Nokia's brand name had on Windows Phone, and without it WP would be at <0.5% market share).
  - jfuhrman 11y ago
    The phones sold last quarter were not branded Nokia.
    - sirkneeland 11y ago
      New Lumia models introduced were branded Microsoft. Previous Lumia models launched as Nokias (830 etc) remain Nokia branded.

bobajeff 11y ago

My idea of a quality Smartphone: Small (ipod mini or nano sized), Durable and Water proof, long lasting battery, E-inc (or similar) display, Able to play music while using navigation and Able to play music while browsing the web. If Mozilla can put this phone together I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

Retr0spectrum 11y ago
I'm not sure something that small would be useful for many "smart" tasks. I recon about 3.5 inches is the sweet spot.
- bobajeff 11y ago
  Sure it would. It works for the iPod mini and smart watches.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  There's no way 3.5" is the "sweet spot" these days. Maybe for primary school students, at most. Otherwise kids want phones with larger screens these days, too. I'd say 4.3" should be the minimum for just about anyone. Phones are more compact than the days of iPhone 1, and most of them are 16:9 now, which would make 3.5" way too cramped for using the keyboard.
TylerE 11y ago
Eink sucks for anything other than ebooks. Way too slow for browsing.
- bradjohnson 11y ago
  I think just browsing can be done at a reasonable speed, but I would think that app developers would be put off by the restrictions that e-ink implies.
bradjohnson 11y ago
Is there some e-ink display that can produce more than 64 colors in development? Even if they make the OS look decent with that small of a pallette, I don't think that the e-ink display will be attractive to people if your webpage rendering looks like garbage.

tomc1985 11y ago

It feels like they barely tried. There's been ZERO ways to acquire this phone in the USA! Why is it so hard to sell an unlocked smartphone direct to consumers in the USA?

kumarm 11y ago

Mozilla at one point had momentum before Chrome came up and wasted it while letting Firefox become slow and memory hog (This was before Chrome came out, I am not commenting on latest versions). I don't see Mozilla turning around because they are trying to be followers where both Apple and Google are executing well enough at least to maintain Status quo. Why go after Smart Phone Market while at best you can be 3rd or 4th best (with less than 5% market share)?

veeti 11y ago

Trying to shoehorn a performance hungry HTML5 OS on low-end phones was a complete waste of time. Just read this review of the $35 Firefox phone [1]: it's completely unusable to the point that even typing is difficult. What an embarrassment. I bought the mid-spec Flame developer device out of curiosity, and it's not much better. Everything feels slow, sluggish and unresponsive. Even Android 2.x was better. My quad-core i7 desktop still occasionally struggles to render the latest and greatest HTML5 stuff at 60 fps. How on earth do they expect a phone to do the same? [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-os-phone-how-bad-could-it-be/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-...

wwweston 11y ago
My experience is out of date, but I'm a little surprised to hear this. I have a Geeksphone Keon that I played with for a lot of 2013, and it wasn't half bad. Ironically my biggest complaint was that web browsing would bog down on pages with a lot of content... and I think that might have been a memory thing. Most of the phone/app stuff seemed fine (except the maps application, which was nigh unusable for me, not sure if that was CPU bound, memory bound, bandwidth bound, or just the wrong mapping service).
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Lots of "content" more like it. Best i can tell, JS can be a serious memory hog. And high "content" sites invariably come with trackers tracking trackers tracking trackers.
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
I'm halfway through the article, and I have to say, I've never read a more brutal review. > The other really weird thing missing is any kind of battery backup for the time. If the phone loses power, the time and date gets reset, leaving it looking like an old VCR blinking "12:00." This seems insane for a device released just a few months ago... when you can get a lumia, which is very reasonable, for just 5$ more, why would anyone bother with this?

pekk 11y ago

So Mozilla's clever idea to attack the low end of the market outside the US has failed and now they want to pivot. The rub is that now they are competing with Android and iPhone, which have years of head start and gigantic app stores. They aren't pursuing compatibility with those existing app stores, so that will be a disadvantage. And they don't have resources like there are behind Windows Phone. Even to take a niche, they need a remarkable positive differentiator. As the quote in the article says, "In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Rhetoric like "change the world" isn't it - the specifics matter. "Embrace the web" isn't a differentiator when all Smartphones can browse websites. I welcome you to find in that article anything but a few planned features which might just keep Firefox OS alive without necessarily giving it a competitive advantage. After watching a few years, I'm not sure even Mozilla knows what the differentiator will be to consumers, because what I always see from them in this kind of press-release piece are vague phrases like "the open web". So for years I have been a little confused about exactly what they are trying to do. A possible clue is that whenever you drill down on projects to which these catchphrases have been applied, what it really boils down to is more Javascript. Please try an experiment: every time you see "the open web" mentioned by Mozilla, see if the same sentence makes as much sense substituting "Javascript." For years this has bothered me because "the open web" does not literally mean "Javascript," yet Mozilla and its fans consistently equivocate between the two. What I realize now is that this isn't because Mozilla is confused about the difference, it's because their core allegiance is to Brandan Eich's brainchild and phrases like "open web" are just a chosen mode of evangelizing Javascript. Maybe Mozilla doesn't know exactly what an all-Javascript world will exactly bring to consumers, but they want it anyway because that is their understanding of their mission. The problem with this is that Javascript advocacy doesn't necessarily have a lot of benefit to consumers or even to programmers other than diehard Javascript fans. To be plain, basically nobody gives a rat's ass if their phone uses more Javascript than Java. It doesn't make anything more open to use Javascript rather than other technologies, openness is a matter of licensing and maybe development process. In practice you still end up with a lot of Javascript APIs specific to Firefox OS (and therefore a collection of apps).

omouse 11y ago
I don't know how you're missing it but apps on phones are like desktop software vs the web. Mozilla wants to win that battle and make it possible to use the open web on multiple devices. You won't be limited to a particular OS and APIs, you can just use FireFox OS or the browser and you're good to go. Using JavaScript is an alright decision especially when you have asm.js and you have TypeScript and flow if you want static typing or type annotations. The flaw in the plan is that no one has tried to get something like Google Docs working on Firefox OS/Mobile and then tried to tune and optimize performance until it worked properly. If they focused on getting heavy websites to load in under a second come hell or high water, they would have made the web browser king on the phone. Instead we have Facebook cutting out the browser by caching the content of news sites.

realrocker 11y ago

I really want Firefox OS to be a success. After working in AOSP firmware for last 5 years and dealing with vendor walled gardens, I wish there was a truly usable open source phone.

seba_dos1 11y ago
Firefox OS isn't any better than Android when it comes to vendor walled gardens. Mozilla doesn't enforce in any way any openness of the platform - it just provides the open OS. It might be more complete experience than what AOSP alone delivers, but it's still up to vendor to provide, or not, any freedom when it comes to usage of the device. Heck, your platform doesn't even need to be open to be able to market it with Firefox OS brand! They have a set of rules you have to fulfill, but basic stuff like unlocked bootloader isn't even part of them.

abrowne 11y ago

I used a Keon as my only phone for summer 2013 – summer 2014. Basic apps were good, but — ironically for a web-based phone — the browsing experience was my biggest negative. Not the actual page layout/etc. — that is just Gecko and worked fine if you didn't try to open too many tabs. The problem was the browser lacked basic features like find in page, sync, and adding search engines. I switched to a Moto E, and I think it actually lags a little more for things like opening the clock app, but I'm basically addicted to Fennec's reader view and sync. (The "system browser" in FxOS 3.0 is also a major regression on tab UX IMO.)

hsivonen 11y ago
I think the system browser in 3.x is a significant UX improvement. The old browser app always felt like trying to impose an Android-like world-view on a system where the system was supposed to be a browser all along.
- abrowne 11y ago
  I get that and thought I would like it, but I guess I still use the (web) apps and the web browser quite differently. I hope further refinements change my mind! More specifically, I tend to open and close a lot of tabs, which involves more steps now, and I want new tabs to open in the background.

jackgavigan 11y ago

I've always thought that Mozilla's strategy with Firefox OS was very optimistic/ambitious. It was first conceived just as cheap Chinese Android smartphones were beginning to make inroads into developing markets[1]. In such markets, simply reducing the cost of the phone from $80 to $25 won't increase smartphone penetration as much as you might think because the cost of the phone itself comprises only a small part of the total cost of ownership - the customer still has to pay for a mobile data plan. That leaves the "open web" approach as the major differentiator between Firefox OS and Android. Whilst I'm a fan of open standards, I doubt the average consumer is going to care enough for Firefox OS to make inroads into Android's dominance of the low-cost smartphone market (in fact, I'd question whether they'll care at all). At this point, if I were on the Mozilla Foundation board, I think I'd be pushing for a cost-benefit assessment of continued investment into Firefox OS. 1: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424454/android-marches-on-east-africa/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424454/android-marches-...

jackgavigan 11y ago
Coincidentally, less than 24 hours later, this story crops up, demonstrating how different the mobile phone market is in developing markets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9604049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9604049

azinman2 11y ago

Sounds like they have no idea what to do now. Not having any apps is probably the biggest disadvantage that can't easily be undone. Android compatibility needs to be to the point where it's flawless for this to make any sense. Personally I'd rather see iOS compatibility but that's very unlikely to happen. Different idea: why not work on something like PhoneGap that's powered by Firefox? If you can create a super powerful framework/dev environment that rivals native (and uses all the smarts and resources of Mozilla to address all current flaws of these existing frameworks), then you could have devs building in a more cross platform & "open" manner. From there you might actually have enough apps compatible to run Firefox os, or better, have that not matter as much because you're what's underneath every app. I have a hard time seeing Mozilla make inroads at this point otherwise.

mackey 11y ago
I don't think the flaws in phone gap and other tools are things that Mozilla can fix, at least not without support from Google/Apple, who really have no incentive to help.

apayan 11y ago

This is a welcome change from Mozilla, but I think they should take it a step further and ditch Firefox OS completely. The original reason d'etre of Firefox OS was that it would run on lower spec'ed and cheaper hardware than Android could, but that's not an efficient use of their limited resources for a couple reasons: 1) Mozilla could contribute to Android to improve it's performance on cheaper hardware. 2) Moore's law is making powerful hardware more affordable for the world's poorest people, faster than Mozilla can get Firefox OS and an attractive app ecosystem off the ground. Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. Everyday, apps become more and more dependent on Google Play services, the proprietary set of libraries that Google controls on Android devices. Developers need an open version of Google Play Services (Mozilla Mobile Services?) and even a competitive app store (10% commission instead of 30%?). The natural next step would be to create their own distribution of Android and release it on quality hardware. Not only would they be furthering the cause of free software and open computing, but they would have a revenue stream to continue their mission.

Istof 11y ago
I was, and I am still looking forward to Firefox OS. Not because of the cheap devices, but because it is open, it's html apps and it isn't run by the same type of company that makes Android or iOS.
hackuser 11y ago
Is there a way they could build an Android-based OS that is open, and that facilitates open apps and data, as well as end-user control? What if they took over Cyangenmod or forked it?
tdkl 11y ago
> Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. This is cool and all, but history has shown that people somehow prefer Android with Google apps. Cyanogen has announced that they're taking Android back and all from Google and I wonder how it'll work out at the end. I wouldn't mind seeing the same thing from Mozilla or even more players, but the sad reality is that enthusiasts don't make revenue.
11y ago

throwaway12357 11y ago

I can't help but feel some "couch coach" desperation with Mozilla's confusion at where should they aim at. Google has Android which is open source but "spyware" prone and suffers from vendor incompetence/uninterest in updates -- in fact this will bite Google sooner or latter. While Apple's iOS is privacy aware but closed source and carries a huge price premium. On the other hand Mozilla is known for open source and for caring for privacy. Furthermore with Snowden's revelations, at least among the IT crowd, as well as governments, there is interest for a secure system. Give me a high-end phone [1] which focus on privacy. Something that supports a stack like Xposed and Xprivacy out of the box. Something whose baseband processor is decoupled from the other processors. And if possible the source code for the sensors or at least the ICD, so that you have an alternative to binary blobs. Give me something that supports encryption and can get consistent no hassle OTA updates. And make it with a compatibility layer to Android's apps [2] I'm all for open source, but Android just ends up being nothing but an headache. A better solution would be welcome. [1] just look at the OnePlus One for $350 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus_One http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus_One In fact Mozilla should have partnered with them. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29

TylerE 11y ago
Does iOS really carry a price premium? My experience, similar to the old Mac/PC debates, is the difference is actually minimal at most when you compare with actually equivalent hardware.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  It only exist in the premium class, so in that sense, if you want iOS just for the iOS, you are stuck buying premium hardware. I do think iOS devices are generally a good deal (in the sense that they are worth the money),but that doesn't mean they are not premium nor premium priced. Quality costs money.
pinaceae 11y ago
so you want iOS, but don't want to pay for it. great market for Mozilla to break into!

Narishma 11y ago

I never understood their focus on cheap phones. Firefox OS (and web technologies in general) is a poor fit for low-spec devices.

Zigurd 11y ago

I have never understood the "we'll win at the lo-end" approach. Android was designed for lo-spec devices. ART has moved android a little bit away from that focus, and so has some bloat in Google's proprietary apps. But Android can still be tuned for and run on very modest hardware. Competing against Android on lo-spec hardware is not a winning plan. For the class of IoT devices that are capable of running Linux, Google thinks they can turn Android into a "headless" configuration that uses Android's runtime and base classes, presumably minus the UI classes. Android is, in fact, pretty darn efficient. And on top of all that, Mozilla thought a Web runtime could be made as efficient as a Java-ish runtime that has a very memory-efficient component architecture? That's just strange.

spitfire 11y ago

I'm still confused as to what Mozilla actually does. At one point they(or the company that spawned them) built a web browser that they sold. Then they were the non-profit offshoot of that keeping an open source browser alive. But now they're... erm... what is it exactly that they are? They're a non-profit that sells browser searches, or something. I'm confused.

SwellJoe 11y ago
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ In short, they try to save the Internet from being run by a few corporations or governments. So, minus cape, they're trying to do superhero things that are often at odds with the biggest companies in the world. Whether they succeed in that with any given project is up for debate, of course. So far, Firefox phones have been a flop. Personally, I want one, because I care about privacy and I care about the open web, but I don't really want a shitty $25 phone. This news is good for me, but I don't know what it says for Mozilla's vision in the mobile market. I've heard people suggest that Android took a while to catch on...but, it really didn't. By the time Android had been on the market for a year, it was clear (to me, anyway) that it would become the dominant player for many of the same reasons Wintel became the dominant desktop platform. Firefox OS doesn't have much to show for the time they've been on the market. It was never even clear to me I could buy a "real" phone (i.e. not developer phone) in the US running FxOS.

andrepd 11y ago

Why not both? Choice is good, and unless there is a good reason for only being able to choose one, I'd say offer devices is various price ranges.

SwellJoe 11y ago

So, mobile devices are an aspirational purchase in many of the developing nations Mozilla was reportedly targeting with these devices. People buy phones that look like high end phones in the US, because that's part of what they want from a phone. I'm not saying low cost phones in developing nations aren't a good goal. That's a wonderful thing, and I think I can understand how the people at Mozilla, who almost always prioritize doing good over doing well, would make the mistake of thinking that building a phone that is good for people in the developing world would be a good way to start their mobile effort. But, and as much as I hate to say this because it reveals a crass consumerism that has infected the world and patient zero is the US, the reality is that modern phones are luxury items that need some of the trappings of luxury...even in developing nations, where they look to the west to define their fashion and trends. If Mozilla can't win a developed world market, they won't be able to convince people in developing nations that what they've built is worthwhile, especially when there are knockoff Android devices that only cost a few bucks more, which are much closer to what people in the developed world are using. I could see how it might even seem patronizing to the poorest folks. I don't know what Mozilla should do; I'm not a mobile mogul. But, I want a Firefox phone. I've wanted one since they announced they were making them. I want one a lot, actually. But, I don't want a shitty phone that's less powerful than my last three Android phones, no matter the price. It's also never been clear to me, as an American, where I can even buy a real FxOS phone. There are dev phones, but they seemed to always just be "sign up for our waiting list" or whatever, which is not something I really do.

tacojuan 11y ago

I have wanted these phones for the longest goddamn time. The LG or KDDI Fx0 was the coolest looking phone I have seen in the last 5 years. But it was unreasonably priced at nearly 400 USD I recently stumbled across the geeksphone revolution which actually seems to be a high-end phone and at a nice pricetag of less than 200 USD.

kozukumi 11y ago

So my comments the other day [1] were pretty to point then. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570

kozukumi 11y ago

So my comments the other day [1] were pretty to point then. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587570

bikamonki 11y ago

Focus on one app: Whatsapp. Say this is the mid 90's and you want to make a dent on the mobile market. So you keep costs low and put a cheapo camera on the thing along a semi-decent mp3 player. But there is one big problem: your Konia 1 phone does not run SMS. Nobody buys the thingy. What went wrong? Oh, its quality, let's put a hi-end camera and try again! It's all about the apps that people use. Remember MS Office? Oh, nice Macs said the IT managers, do they run MS Office? Go cut a deal with Zucker and get Whatsapp for FFOS then the phones will sell.

sanxiyn 11y ago
They must be aware of this since LINE does run on Firefox OS. I think deal is in progress.

contingencies 11y ago

Mesh networking is the killer mobile app - FirefoxOS should focus on this, as it fits with their ethos. The developing world doesn't need telephones, they need secure and convenient means to transfer data wirelessly and code that works with sporadic, slow, shared connectivity. Frankly, they need crypto plus mesh networking. Make it a platform for privacy-controlled social networking, high scores, app updates ... it should differentiate far enough to win users. Basically, make it the hacker's choice ... then, you'll get applications, too. A cheap version without GSM or CDMA would be an option.

TOMDM 11y ago
Mesh networking + crypto seems to be an incredibly disruptive technology that I'm surprised hasn't seen wide market adoption. The technology obviously exists and works, as it has been shown being used by protesters or in disaster relief areas. Why has this not been proliferated world over, from developing countries to cheap internet providers? (Not calling anyone lazy or stupid, I'm legitimately curious as to what social, technical or legal roadblocks must be holding this tech back)
- grizzles 11y ago
  I ran a mesh networking startup about 2 years ago. A few details about it are here: tricorder.org/eric/uplink.html. From my perspective, there are two main barriers: 1) It's hard to explain to customers who are used to the current ISP internet access paradigm. This barrier can be overcome. 2) Not only do you need to win customers, you need to win a critical mass of customers within a focused geographic area. #2 is very, very hard imo.
  - contingencies 11y ago
    First up, good job writing up your idea in hindsight. I think it differs slightly from mesh networking on mobiles with high latency transfer expectations / custom apps fairly significantly. You were trying to provide the internet as a service for free in real time, I think the killer app is actually embracing store and forward again. For problem #1, if it works at the consumer level then I think people don't really care about how it works. For #2, I think the current model of 'use free wifi from coffee shops, hotels, bars, restaurants' that seems globally dominant would work fine.

reeboo 11y ago

I would love it if someone would come along and offer an android experience while applying an value framework like the Mozilla manifesto. Not saying this has to be Mozilla, though it would make sense for them to do it.

chubs 11y ago

Rust could be a great platform to build a new mobile OS on. Non-garbage collected so it'd be fast and efficient on low-memory ARM devices. Just like Obj-C really gave iOS a headstart on java-based Android. Doubly-so if they want to continue to target the low-spec end of the market.

alexnewman 11y ago

The fact that ubuntu and mozilla are both launching open phone platforms that compete in exactly the same space baffles me. The fact that ubuntu has it's own browser based on blink, and firefox is convinced that all you need is a browser is just....

drewm1980 11y ago

Mozilla could make a rustphone where apps run 10X as fast as all that webby crap, never crash, and don't force the user into frequent hardware upgrades just to keep the UI responsive. Make smartphones that are as reliable as dumbphones.

throwaway41597 11y ago

There is room for FirefoxOS: - No performance regressions. Somehow, the blazing fast device I bought a couple of years ago now feels sluggish. Core apps should be timeless: the dialer, the keyboard, task switcher shouldn't be slower two years after purchase. - Graceful degradation. Websites have no easy way to detect how fast a device is, so they are built for the majority with a bias for the newest and fastest. The result is that cheap and old devices get obsoleted even for the simple stuff. If a $25 phone is as powerful as a 2000 computer, then let the developer feature-detect it and design for it. - Good permissions. I don't know the solution but there's a problem. Android's model is depressingly bad. iOS's is too dumbed-down to be trustworthy. Firefox's granularity is good to have but web developers seem to assume the user is always going to grant the permission. I always grunt at websites which want my position to find a store near me and display a blank page when I reject it. - Timely OS updates. Firefox already has a fast release cycle regardless of the desktop OS. Why can't mobile be the same? I believe kernel patches are less of an issue with web apps because the kernel isn't the first line defense. - Reasonably priced. The $100-200 range is already full of good Android devices. Just make deals with manufacturers to sell a Firefox version of those. They already sell dozens of different phones, so it should be feasible to convince them to add a couple identical devices with a different OS. FirefoxOS only needs one good device. - Security. Better sandbox the blackboxes (drivers and radio). Those were my pain points, but I'm willing to make sacrifices: - 60 FPS isn't that important for me. I care more about response time when I tap something. - Most animations/transitions won't be missed. Some add value but marginally so. Most are arbitrary and useless. - Most apps won't be missed. I only use a few. Apple is margin-driven. Google is ad-driven. They already cause pain to the consumer and market dominance will only make matters worse. They also are walled gardens so they cause pain to the developer. Mozilla is indeed in a similar position to that of the 2000s.