Unlocked Firefox OS ZTE Open Is Now Available On eBay For For $80

SmartAboutThings writes "We've been hearing quite a lot lately about the Firefox OS, but there are actually only a few Firefox OS phones launched on the market. ZTE Open is one of them and is actually the first Firefox OS phone for consumers. Even if Firefox OS has support from carriers all over the world, it's pretty hard to sell devices in more locations across the world. To remedy that, ZTE is going to sell the Firefox OS Open phone on eBay for eighty dollars, which is actually ten dollars less than the launch price. A real great thing is that the handset will be off-contract and unlocked which means you will be able to use it on all mobile networks. ZTE didn't mention when exactly the device will go on sale on eBay, the company just mentioning 'soon.'"

Comments

I'll hold out

[Cornwallis]

until I know it is "NSA Ready."

Re:I'll hold out

[larwe]

Well, it's going to be even better than that - it's going to be "Chinese intelligence community ready", or so the US Government believes - Chinese telecoms vendors have very tough going in the US market. Re gmuslera's comment below, there's a lot more software in the phone than just the OS and apps. It seems very unlikely that the whole software stack, particularly the code running in the baseband processor, will be open source (too much proprietary magic in it), and exploits could easily be hidden in that side of the phone - or even in hardware, if it comes to that. After quickly looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS I see that there is no mention made of the coprocessors; they're just talking about the OS and application environment as being open-source. Additionally, if the NSA wants your data - scratch that, WHEN the NSA wants your data, which is all the time, they simply tap it at the source. If you're using someone's network, you're at the mercy of that someone.

Re:I'll hold out

[rtfa-troll]

Even if it's fully open, with 0 binary blobs. How many qualified specialists, with serious math background, do you think are out there looking through complex encryption functions checking through flaws in math? Ever heard of Obfuscated C Code Contests? Openness of the code does not guarantee absence of backdoors even if the code does get a lot of eyeballs looking at it.

Firstly; if the Obfuscated C Code scares you then I guess you should look up the underhanded C contest. Notice especially the bits where malware is disguised as small programming bugs. When you say "Openness of the code does not guarantee.." you are 100% right. However, don't forget, "the perfect is the enemy of the good". We don't always need a guarantee; sometimes improvement is enough:

1) Given that there have been plenty of discoveries of problems (e.g. just today a flaw in Android's RNG was reported) there must be quite a few people who are checking.

2) All it takes is one person. You don't need to do anything to benefit if I check it for you.

3) There is a vast increase in the risk for the attacker if it's open source;

• their change is likely visible in the version control and can be traced back to them
• it's easy for someone to change their backdoor into a trap
• if they do use the attack to break in it's much easier to track it back to the original programming mistake

4) Security problems tend to happen in generally insecure code. If code is open source you can avoid this:

• by looking to see how the code is written and choosing the software using the best techniques and languages
• by choosing code written by people you feel you can trust and avoiding others

Several of the things I mentioned are things that most people won't do most of the time. Having them as options means that they will be available when you actually really need them.

defenders can spot the hole and

Re:"All" Mobile Networks?

[CanHasDIY]

2 degrees of separation, here's the latest list of carriers, dated 7/29/13:

América Móvil - Jamaica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil
China Unicom – China
Deutsche Telekom – Germany
Etisalat – Middle-East
Hutchison Three Group – United Kingdom
KDDI – Japan
KT – South Korea
MegaFon – Russia, Tajikistan
Qtel – Qatar
SingTel – Singapore
Smart - Philippines
Sprint – United States
Telecom Italia Group – Italy
Telefónica – Spain
Telenor – Norway
TMN – Portugal
VimpelCom – Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Algeria, Bangladesh

Radio switch?

[Hatta]

Is there a hardware radio switch for those of us who don't want to be tracked by the government all the time? Failing a hardware switch, a software one could be acceptable since I can compile the OS myself.

At that price, running an open source OS, this might be my first cell phone.

Re:Radio switch?

[robmv]

They forked Android initially, don't know if they replaced bionic for glibc and more "GNUish" libraries, they aren't using Android SurfaceFlinger but they are using the GL drivers used for Android devices. Or they are using libhybris to make those GL drivers/libraries (that are linked against bionic) to run with Glibc or Firefox OS is still running bionic.

Link to store, not in article

[undeadbill]

http://stores.ebay.com/ztemobileus

Personally, I will wait. The phone is only capable of 3G, and my network supports LTE. However, the price is right if that wasn't an issue.

Performance?

[inglorion_on_the_net]

I wonder how well this will run. Although Firefox has slimmed down somewhat after the 2.x era, it has never been particularly lightweight in my experience. About every other smartphone OS maker who has gone the "thou shalt build thy apps using HTML5, not native code" has been burned by bad performance, even when they launched with high-end phones.

According to this CNET review, the ZTE Open is at least faster than the Alcatel Fire, which they describe as slow and laggy.

I guess all this means that they are aiming Firefox OS at the low end of the market, where performance matters less than being able to afford a smartphone. However, I've always found it strange that companies do that - if you are going to make a low-end device, wouldn't you want to make the most efficient use of the hardware resources you have by running native code even more than if you had plenty of CPU cycles and RAM to burn?

Re:Performance?

[evilviper]

About every other smartphone OS maker who has gone the "thou shalt build thy apps using HTML5, not native code" has been burned by bad performance, even when they launched with high-end phones.

FirefoxOS has no magic bullet. Their javascript performance will be just as poor. They seem to be developing this only because they have more money coming in than they know what to do with, and smartphones are a buzzword... /. had a good story on javascript performance, specifically on phones, a month ago:

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/07/14/2348226/an-interesting-look-at-the-performance-of-javascript-on-mobile-devices

I guess all this means that they are aiming Firefox OS at the low end of the market, where performance matters less than being able to afford a smartphone.

Except you can get no-contract Android phones even cheaper than this, which obviously support native apps, java/dalvik apps, and HTML5 apps, even run under Firefox.

Re:Horrible specs

[jbeaupre]

2009 called and wants their first gen android phone back.

Then they can go buy it on Ebay for $80 just like everyone else.

Re:Horrible specs

[Blaskowicz]

And yet it supports 32GB storage vs 8 or 16GB on your typical iphone.

Re:Horrible specs

[IwantToKeepAnon]

Timeframe (year, century, era, ____blank____) communicated (called, phoned, emailed, telegraphed, ____blank____) and wants its something (technology, ideology, automobile, ____blank____) back.

The 20th century faxed me and wants its joke back.

Re:Stupid Question

[BitZtream]

Probably just run stock android on it, then there are any number of standard GUI toolkits you could use. Qt for example (though personally, I can't stand Qt/Trolltech/Nokia), as well as the standard UI toolkit built into android.

Remember, FirefoxOS is just a hacked android distro anyway. Think of it the same way you think of the Kindle Fire. They just through their own (shitty) special sauce on someone else's OS.

Re:"All" Mobile Networks?

[PCM2]

Where did this list come from? It seems highly unlikely that any phone would work on Sprint in the US but not on Verizon, and as far as I know the ZTE Open does not have a CDMA radio, which means it would work on AT&T and T-Mobile, but not Sprint.