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Firefox OS Smartphones Launching, But Will Anyone Buy One?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Mozilla and its hardware partners have begun launching the first Firefox OS smartphones, starting with Spain's Telefonica releasing the ZTE Open later this week. A lightweight mobile OS based on HTML5, Firefox OS (once known as 'Boot to Gecko') offers a user interface instantly familiar to anyone who's used Google Android or Apple iOS: in addition to home-screens of individual apps arranged on a grid, features include messaging, email, built-in social-networking, maps, and the Firefox Web browser. There's also Firefox Marketplace, an online storefront of HTML5 apps; early apps include Twitter, Facebook, AccuWeather, and a handful of games. But can Firefox OS make any headway in a mobile-device crowded with options? At this February's Mobile World Congress, Mozilla claimed that some 17 operators around the world have committed to the Firefox OS initiative, including China Unicom, Sprint, MegaFon, and the Telecom Italia Group. But many of those operators released rather ambiguous statements about whether they would launch an actual Firefox OS smartphone. Tony Cripps, principal device analyst at Ovum, wrote in a research note earlier this year that 'the real acid test for Firefox OS and its long-term prospects is the quality of the software itself and the user and developer experiences that it fosters.' In other words, Mozilla and its partners need to produce some quality devices, paired with a variety of spectacular apps. Some early reviews of the ZTE Open weren't good, to put it mildly, with The Verge citing: 'unremarkable hardware' and a 'laggy' OS. But that doesn't mean future phones can't go toe-to-toe against anything else on the market, provided Mozilla and its partners provide solid support and marketing."
I can't follow why this is a good idea for them.
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I use my phone for talk, text, calendar, alarm, occasional web browsing on the go, random photography, and toilet gaming. I don't need all the exciting social and lifestyle integration that mobile platforms assume you want.
So I'd certainly go for one, provided (a) there's some affordable, nice-ish hardware (like my Nexus 4), and (b) I'm not beholden to the network operator for software updates.
Being free of that pervasive "am I happy with Google slurping this?" feeling every time I do anything on my Android phone would be worth it.
${DIETY} - Use of an undefined higher being found at line 0. Did you forget to feed it?
Does it spy on you less than Google's offering?
Is it more affordable and generally compatible than Apple's offering?
If so, then the world does, in fact, need it.
IMO it would make more sense to use Firefox OS as a runtime on other smart phones. This way you could write a HTML 5 APP and it would work on browsers and in the Firefox OS runtime in any smart phone... sort of like what Java was supposed to be.
Any idea if something like this is actually being done?
Together all these niche phones would have a chance, but if all of them want to have their own app store and walled garden, they will all fail.
Someone wake me up when a mobile device has the following features:
can install any arbitrary OS (does not have a locked bootloader)
The default OS is secure
The default OS is not a walled garden
It took my kid hardly any time at all to get her Nexus 7 tablet filled with malware.
Yeah, we should shut up and be happy with iOS or Android. It's not like choice and competition ever benefited anyone, anyway.
Also, it's ${DEITY}, which currently evaluates to 0.
Also, the default Firefox start page now shows a foxy-looking character lighting a fart in front of a mobile phone.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I use my phone for talk, text, calendar, alarm, occasional web browsing on the go, random photography, and toilet gaming. I don't need all the exciting social and lifestyle integration that mobile platforms assume you want.
So I'd certainly go for one, provided (a) there's some affordable, nice-ish hardware (like my Nexus 4), and (b) I'm not beholden to the network operator for software updates.
Being free of that pervasive "am I happy with Google slurping this?" feeling every time I do anything on my Android phone would be worth it.
I installed avatarrom on my phone. It turns out to be a big problem, as it takes up more and more system memory. I have 2GB available, and avatarrom takes up 1.7GB of that. That leaves 300MB for apps and cache. Many apps refuse to install or don't work anymore. So did Gmail. I stopped using it. Avatarrom updates followed, as well as Gapps updates (google apps I suppose). The last one I didn't install. Since then I'm Google free. No Google account is needed to use the phone. OK, gmail doesn't work, Google Maps is gone, and worst of all, Google Play doesn't work, so no updates, no new installs, unless I download them manually. But they don't work anyway, so why bother? ;-) Of course I'm going to get rid of this stupid install and see if something else works properly. Until then I can pretend to be GFree...
From WHAT? Loading ,apks from torrent sites? Installing apps from random Chinese app stores? Clicking on every mobile porn site ad he could find? I've never encountered an Android device with a malware problem. I'm sure that they exist but for normal users of the Google and Amazon app stores I have a hard time believing that it's a serious problem.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
"But that doesn't mean future phones can't go toe-to-toe against anything else on the market, provided Mozilla and its partners provide solid support and marketing."
So they produced something that sucks, but if they improve what they do, they can produce something in the future that doesn't suck? Why doesn't Microsoft get this kind of encouragement any time they put, oh, almost anything on the market? They could improve their sucky products with hypothetical future efforts too!
since it has been revealed that the Govt via the NSA/FBI and other three letter turds that float around in the govt cesspool i plan on cutting back on technology as much as possible, that means within a few months to a couple of years as my tech toys die i do not plan to replace them, when this desktop PC dies thats it no more desktop PCs, same with my laptop and cellphone, fuck it i dont need them,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Just what the world needs, another phone OS.
I assume you are being a sarcastic, but the reality is I am sure it does. Right now the whole market is being given to Android, and although Google is not motivated solely by competition, but your time spent in their services. compitition keeps companies honest(look how Microsoft is treating its *cough* customers) Apple are happy to give the market away again, and look to end with a small but profitable niche player, as it was in its now forgotten PC market, or simply will not exist. Personally I think an OS like this has real opportunity(I am more excited by Sailboat...and to a lesser extent Ubuntu). I hope its not blocked by aggressive actions by Microsoft who simply so not have a serious product.
Go look at the desktop version of this site with Firefox 22 for Android and you'll see why Mozilla is going to have a hard time with their OS. It's a mix of Mozilla's poor technical choices (look at the same site with Dolphin HD or the stock browser) and sites caring only about Webkit mobile browsers.
So they produced something that sucks, but if they improve what they do, they can produce something in the future that doesn't suck?
The problem was the review (in context of your Microsoft comments they get a free pass too often and are blocking the market for Fledging OS's), is that A €69 / $90 (including €30 / $39 balance) for prepay customers was not compared as one. These are not flagship products they are aimed at the very bottom of the smartphone market. Now admittedly hardware in that market is getting better. I notice http://www.gizchina.com/2013/06/27/goophone-x1-set-to-be-worlds-cheapest-quad-core-phone-at-less-than-100/ Goophone are planning on selling a quad core phone for $100...but that in an uncertain future.
The bottom line is I saw some pretty advanced phones for very little money.
If they don't capture a chunk of the mobile space they will die.
I really liked your comment, but I think Mozilla has an image problem. Its marketshare on the desktop, is dropping yet its still IMO the best browser, and other than its startup time(which is probably better since I used it last) I loved the firefox mobile browser on both Android and the N900 . If I didn't have to sync through the cloud to get my bookmarks on the phone tablet I would use it in that space.
They seem a great company, and I cannot believe they have such a hard time selling themselves against Microsoft/Google/Apple who are just mega corporations
That system has been terminated, due to too many exceptions.
Yeah; monopolies are the best! Who wants any of that stinking choice and competition?
Currently, mobiles are pretty much a two horse race- Android and iOS. There is no credible third player- Windows and Blackberry are both down to the margins. Personally, I'd love to see that two horse race become a three or four horse race. And for vague philosophical reasons, I'd rather that those extra two horses weren't either Windows or Blackberry.
Personally I'm hoping that Sailfish or Ubuntu will do well. But hey, nothing wrong with Mozilla. If they can pull off a decent OS, then more power to them- I'd buy it, if it were any good.
does anyone using android, aside from a few fanbois, actually care what's under the hood? they use it because
1) it basically works
2) it has a touchscreen and apps
3) it brings internet-age computer apps like browser and email to phones
and manufacturers lined up to use it because:
1) it's free to license and use.
2) see #1
3) see #2
Have a good long piss before you go to bed. You'll be sleeping for quite some time. Security and functionality are about trade-offs. Even walled garden systems are relatively insecure, and being able to install anything from anywhere is an incredible risk.
What was the kid doing to fill a stock Nexus with malware? The computing equivalent of indiscriminate sex with Belize prostitutes? What you're looking for is hello.c
It doesn't do much, but it's at least as secure as the compiler and the system in which it's run.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
D'oh! Why do they say "'I' before 'E', except after 'C'"? That's weird.
That's because everyone forgets the second verse...
"or when sounding like "ay" as in neighbor or weigh".
Or the equally forgotten and badly rhymed third verse for words like ancient:
"Or when CIE sound like "sheh"'
And, of course, every rule of English grammar has an unwritten fourth verse:
"Exceptions will be made."
Firefox needs to focus on their core product more than trying to expand into a marketplace that's completely over their head. There's a reason why people switch to Chrome. For starters, improving the slow startup speed compared to Chrome and Webkit Opera would be awesome.
I've bought two you insensitive clod!
The "I before E" exceptions are so many, they needed a poem.
http://nothings.org/writing/tb/ie.html
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
and the other >1% market share phone manufacturers should get together and release phones that lets the user easily download and install Firefox OS or Android (the free version) or Ubuntu Mobile or any other open source OS.
Apple and Samsung and Nokia will never do it since they do not want to end up making cheap commodity hardware with razor thin margins. But you have zero market share anyways... a small profit is better than none, right?
MS, Google and in 2012 Apple signed up according to the leaks. NONE of them let you compile their software yourself. webkit is just an engine, the apps are not open to compile.
Firefox does things fast enough just like the other browsers are just good enough feature wise to keep simple users happy. I usually can't move faster than firefox but I can't have dozens of useful additions in the other browsers (the main ones have been ported but the cool new ideas still happen as firefox plug-ins 1st.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Um, yes. Yes it can. It will be installed on the device. Consider that its headway.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Apple prohibits such app runners.
but what is pretty common is writing a mobile app in html5+javascript and running it inside a shim on ios, android and wp..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But they only have contact Sync with Facebook (and SIM card of course).
I would want a privacy oriented organization to not be pushing people to Facebook...
I have been resisting buying a smartphone for years. The only sensible reason for me to own one would be so that I can tinker with it. Sure you can play around with Android a bit, but I want something that will ease my tinkering rather than try to prevent me. Apple, of course, is straight out because of this. I want a smartphone that I can turn inside out, hack, wipe, reinstall its OS, re-hack, re-wipe and re-install, write small apps for, use to exchange data with, and get creative with its WiFi, bluetooth and accelerometers. And I want all that without fearing of EULAs and other layer mumbo jumbo. And a pony.
Give me such a phone and you have a customer.
I think it's an interesting OS to watch for. I can see similarities with the web. The web seemed to turn into a proprietary format. Firefox stumbled on, but it seemed like an uphill battle that would never succeed. However they did succeed, by just keeping to their goals. The web now is more open then 10 years ago, where you couldn't even access the website of your bank with Firefox.
Now with this OS, it might turn out the same. It's all somewhat closed platforms. Apple uses Obj-C, Android a Java variant. Other platforms use Qt. Now Firefox comes along and uses a platform that is already open, html5/css/js, and uses it for apps.
I just hope the other underdogs follow suit, and use the same API, like Ubuntu, Jolla, Tizen.
We'' lees what the future brings. I think they can do it, and provide a common platform for the future.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Assuming you can't convert the laguage to apps easily to English then it's really only going to sell in Spain (I would assume) and given their economy is one of the worst in Europe I'm not sure people are jumping at the chance to buy new smart phones. Though if it's cheap I guess that might work in their favour.
Spoiler, for those of you who haven't read the books, stop reading here.
This isn't going to work. There will not be a significant number of people who purchase this Mozilla phone. Mozilla phone will have less sales than Zune.
Firefox cant even get the Browser right anymore. They dont listen to its end users, Dont fix the real issues, and only fix the ones that make the system work without crashing. Look at the mobile browser,The "top Sites", you cant delete them, they are always there, ( some you can remove others you have to completely reset the browser to get them gone. Millions of users have complained about this, firefox has released several updates, none of them fix the issue. So if they cant get that right why do they seem to think they can get the whole OS right? The main reason for Firefox when it began was out to HELP the end user, and not exploit them. The company got purchased ( back in the day) and now the owners have gold fever, which clouds their judgement on whats real to its users. Firefox thinks just like the rest of the internet companies out there, they think they are in charge of ththe internet. When thats not the case. Its the peoples choice that makes and controls the internet, Not the companies that actually make it run. FireFox can and will follow the path of self distruction if they dont get back to their roots.
You can wake up almost four years ago. The n900 has been around for a while.
How will Firefox OS live within the mobile patent wars? It may attract some vendors if patent free, since it lower the cost. But if that brings success, it will get patent suits.
You get it from downloading free apps that have auto downloads of other apps that have ads and more auto loaded apps. From Playstore. Go download any number of dress up apps for girls or apps that give you jewels to buy fashion so you can go on "dates" or get modeling jobs. Worse yet get cupcake maker apps where you can buy sprinkles and decorations. They also force download other apps that say "banking" or "browser" , you get the idea.
Yep it's malware hidden behind cuteness.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
And instead of welcoming it, people slag off on it.
It is a platform which is incredibly easy to adopt and make applications for, and it is not owned and steered by some company with a profit agenda and a mandate of openness. People still slag off on it sight unseen.
The organisation steering the project are not a bunch of scrubs and have some serious experience... And yet people slag off on it.
It is very well designed, and people still slag off on it despite having no idea of the design benefits. It understands that mobile internet is sketchy and takes counter-measures to offer an effective off-line mode and still people slag off on it. It doesn't rely on freakin Java, Objective-C, C# or the Eclipse/XCode/Visual Studio IDEs and they still slag off on it.
It has CalDAV support out of the box - and likely CardDAV soon enough. The interface is beautiful and functional. It is unlikely to have NSA backdoors... And yet people slag off on it.
It is aimed at being affordable rather than outrageously expensive like every other popular platform, and yet people slag off on it.
Although yes, most of the hardware it is coming out is underpowered with 256MB of RAM. It can run on higher powered hardware but that's not their focus at launch. I however will reserve judgement because I know my old Windows Phone 7 device with half the resources of my new Android device runs twice as fast. It won't be fast but it may not be terrible. Fucking wait a few months if you want your average $600+ powerhouse and STFU.
For once somebody decides to leverage low-income markets and instead of being positive about the opportunities and applauding the smart approach to bootstrapping a new OS, people whine about how bad Firefox apparently is even though they haven't used it in years and the true culprit of their problems were the piles of shoddy plugins and the crappy Windows XP system they were using.
As is apparent, people would rather talk out their ass rather than be constructive.
On Android your typical "native" app is written in Java and uses GL for graphics if it needs fast 3D graphics. The Java is interpreted (on older Android) or JIT-compiled (Android 2.2 and newer). And this JIT is not exactly like HotSpot in terms of the performance it produces. For audio it uses whatever the system libraries are.
On FirefoxOS your typical app is written in JavaScript and uses WebGL for graphics if it needs fast 3D graphics. The JavaScript is JIT-compiled. The output can be within a factor of 2 of the performance of C++ code for game engines (see http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/ if you've missed it). For audio, it uses the browser's Web Audio implementation.
The two setups are actually a lot more similar than it seems at first glance.
Provided they're free (with contract) phones, they'll be snapped up fairly quickly.
Android's outselling iPhones due to this - the top selling Android (SGS3) is barely 10% of phones sold since it was released. The vast majority of Android phones are free ones kicked out because people were upgrading. If Mozilla can produce a decent phone with decent specs that still goes for free with contract, it'll appeal to lots of people.
And yes, people buy Androids because upgrading their featurephones can cost just as much money for a new featurephone. But taking advantage of the "3 free Androids" deal that crops up constantly...
Interesting, but thats not what I'm saying.
Where I'm expecting the performance difference is from the extra overhead of the app having to compose everything into HTML5 and serialise it just to pass it to the browser, which then has to parse it back out to something it can render.
The primary use of a browser is to facilitate displaying something stored/composed on some other internet node. Because it assumes comms it expects everything over a socket wrapped in HTML5, which it then has to unpack again in order to render. This is both redundant and significant overhead when the source is already local.
Compare that to other OS's where the app does its rendering directly to the GPU probably via shared memory. No need for intermediate creation of HTML5, possible compression of it, marhsalling and transmitting over a socket layer via a protocol (TCP) that isn't efficient for a guranteed lossless environment, then another process or 2 has to unmarshall it, possibly uncompress and unparse the HTML5, then recompose it into another form suitable for rendering.
On a desktop the extra work/power required to make the performance impact of all these extra layers seamless to the user may not be an issue, but I think it will always be an issue on smaller devices, especially battery-powered ones, where every wasted cycle directly impacts battery life.
I think you're just misunderstanding how these apps work, both for HTML5 and for Android native apps.
Your typical Android "native" app (which does not actually use the NDK) expresses its user interface in a text file containing XML, with Java event handlers attached to it to respond to various user actions. This XML is parsed at runtime and the corresponding Android UI toolkit objects are created.
Your typical "HTML5" app expresses its user interface in a text file containing HTML, with JavaScript event handlers attached to it. The HTML is parsed at runtime and the corresponding DOM nodes and CSS boxes are created.
Both can use OpenGL via the appropriate language bindings (WebGL in the case of HTML5 apps), but typically neither one actually does, leaving that up to the runtime (the browser in the case of the HTML5 appe, the Android runtime libraries for Android native apps) instead.
For a locally installed HTML5 app there are no sockets or TCP involved in a web browser: just reading (or mmapping) data from persistent storage.
If you actually look at the design documents for FirefoxOS they discuss this issue directly. There are actually _fewer_ layers there for rendering than there are for non-NDK Android apps.