Mozilla To Sell '$25' Firefox OS Smartphones In India

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Mozilla To Sell '$25' Firefox OS Smartphones In India

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 12, 2014 @02:10AM from the prosperity-sensors dept.

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, has announced it will start selling low-cost smartphones in India within the "next few months". Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, the firm's chief operating officer suggested the handsets, which will be manufactured by two Indian companies, would retail at $25 (£15) [note: full article paywalled]. They will run Mozilla's HTML5 web-based mobile operating system, Firefox OS. The firm already sells Firefox-powered phones in Europe and Latin America. Firefox OS has come a long way even in the year since we saw a tech demo at Linux Fest Northwest.

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Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 02:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

At $25, I'd be in for at least one, just to have a look at this 'firefox OS' in its native habitat (as well as it likely being at least better than most dumbphones in terms of usability, probably not enough screen, for $25, to take on the $100+ 'smartphone' scene. Any chance of these showing up stateside?

A mobile OS that isn't Apple's Garden of Pure Ideology, or linked directly to the mothership in Redmond if you actually want to do much of anything would also be nice to see.
1. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Threni · 2014-06-12 02:19 · Score: 2
  
  I predict they'll never be available in the US/UK for anything like that little money. There'll be taxes and import duty and this and that and....and it'll end up being 3 times that, and for the money you'd be able to buy something which less horrific performance. There's no profit in this for anyone - why bother in the first place?
2. Re:Any chance at getting one? by just_another_sean · 2014-06-12 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  Well 3 x $25 = $75. At that price I still agree with the PP, I'd pay it just to see what Firefox OS is like.
  It would have to be over two hundred before I'd decide it wasn't worth it.
  
  --
  Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
3. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  The Android 2.3.6 phone I bought last November cost $30.
4. Re:Any chance at getting one? by aNonnyMouseCowered · 2014-06-12 02:52 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  +1 on this one. Mozilla should not commit the same mistake as the OLPC project in restricting sales to selected Third World regions. It should sell the phone wherever there are buyers, if not at your local telco or Walmart, then online. More sales in the West means more phones falling into the hands of geeky bums with the potential and time to tinker/mod the phone into something just a wee bit cooler than the default factory-shipped OS. Will the phone have more juice than the Raspberry Pi? Maybe it could sell to the maker crowd.
5. Re:Any chance at getting one? by gQuigs · 2014-06-12 02:56 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  How about $100?
  Announcement post; https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/...
  US store: http://item.ebay.com/291125433...
6. Re:Any chance at getting one? by CastrTroy · 2014-06-12 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'd love to have a cheap phone option available for when I'm going places I'd rather not bring my expensive smart phone. Going to the beach, take the cheap phone. Going skiing, take the cheap phone. Going out to the bar, take the cheap phone. There's a lot of situations where having a cheap phone that doesn't cost so much to replace could come in useful.
  
  --
  
  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
7. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  Android 2.x? You would do that to yourself?
8. Re:Any chance at getting one? by MightyYar · 2014-06-12 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks! My Android phone is starting to fritz out and this would be fun to play with.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
9. Re:Any chance at getting one? by gstoddart · 2014-06-12 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  If it's a SIM based phone, and you destroy the phone and your SIM ... are you any better off?
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
10. Re: Any chance at getting one? by AvitarX · 2014-06-12 03:24 · Score: 2
  
  I got the Motorola e ink phone (with 12 segment characters by 8 or so across) for $25 on Amazon as a back up phone a few years ago, it was a $15 dollar phone for India too.
  
  --
  Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
11. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Frankie70 · 2014-06-12 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  There are Nokias available for 25$ or lesser in most countries without any plan. Which are sturdy as an ox and have absolutely no problems.
12. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  They may not make it here at $25 (a cynic would note that this is hardly the first story involving some Indian outfit that was allegedly going to work wonders in low cost electronics, who then dithers and flakes out, increasing prices, slipping schedules, or trimming specs, until, mysteriously, they eventually manage to deliver something or other, right about the time that Chinese mystery-brands are selling them on ebay for the same money, Slashdot has had at least a couple of such stories involving tablets for education); but the route taken by cheap 'n cheerful electronics to the US appears to be fairly swift and not too marked up(as long as you don't pay Belkin or somebody to write an English manual and slap their sticker on it). The US isn't a 'How do they hit that price point even with counterfeit parts and child labor? miracle of cheapness; but this isn't Brazil, or one of those lucky European countries where the price is the same as in the US, except that they want that many pounds or that many euros...
13. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 03:43 · Score: 2
  
  I never used a smartphone before this one. Would you care to explain what killer features I'm missing out on?
14. Re:Any chance at getting one? by dotancohen · 2014-06-12 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  I use Android 2.1 on a rooted Barnes & Noble Nook Simpletouch and I'm trying to get the same version working on a B&N Nook Glowlight. I love it, it is perfect for running simple applications such as Anki, which I use to study.
  
  --
  It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
15. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  Even if it doesn't, my understanding is that it runs some sort of Linux kernel, with enough juice for a mostly-HTML/JS GUI to be endurable, plus it obviously includes at least some baseline GSM/GPRS (quite possibly a later standard; but it'd be hard to call it much of a phone without that), which is a notable perk for certain projects.
  
  Interfacing a GSM module with anything from a microcontroller on up isn't all that hard (Hayes Ain't Dead, just extended a lot...); but a bare SIM900 module will run you a trifle above $10 on its own, more for something a little less spartan with a SIM slot and convenient headers. (the SIM900A is a bit cheaper; but only dual band, rather than quad, which can be an issue depending on where you live). Obviously, you can do considerably better if you score a working pull from a dead laptop or something, and a fancy arduino-shield configuration with all the connectors and such soldered on can run you ~$20 alone; but the moral of the story is that if you want to do some sort of embedded project that uses SMS or GPRS in some way, it's getting pretty hard to save money by using an add-on module for your choice of teeny computer if you can, instead, get a low-end linuxized phone that is suitably cooperative about software customization. The only real exception would be in situations where the lack of GPIO and similar microcontroller standard features is an issue, since phones tend to be fairly sparse on that score.
  
  It's getting to be the same way with screens. Unless you are doing some 16x4 character display, or a Nokia 1100 LCD clone, or going all the way up to a cheap 'n cheerful 17 inch monitor, you can have some difficulty sourcing (and driving) moderate size LCDs for less money than you could spend to get the LCD and an entire computer, with battery, attached.
16. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 03:57 · Score: 2
  
  At least for contract customers, and often for prepaid, carriers are usually willing to issue a replacement SIM (they might charge 5-10 dollars to do so; but especially for contract customers, why lose a customer over a dinky little crypto IC?) and invalidate the old one.
  
  Not something you want to deal with the hassle of; but not as bad as losing an expensive phone with the SIM in it. (Plus, if your phone is cheap junk, you can still lose/destroy it on your own; but it is less likely to be stolen, which helps increase effective reliability, since most thieves aren't polite enough to pull the SIM before lifting the handset.) As for environmental hazards, SIMs are pretty tough. Unless you physically snap one, give it a particularly stiff hit of ESD, or microwave it, it'll probably be fine. A little salt water, your phone falling a couple of stories onto concrete, and similar mishaps are unlikely to do it much harm.
17. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Aside from the odds that running 2.3 may mean that your last security fix was in 2011 (depends on how much the entity that built the image cared), lack of TLS SNI, VPN support, hardware accelerated UI, SELinux, and flash filesystem TRIM support are the major downers.
  
  Application compatibility may or may not be an issue, depending on which ones you want.
18. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:13 · Score: 0
  
  Again, why can't I have the $25 one? Not everyone in America is rich... I'd buy 3 of these for my whole house.
19. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:19 · Score: 0
  
  It feels like we are getting ripped off in the US. Why the 300% markup for people in the US? There are people here who would only buy this phone for $25 because $100 is out of their price range. I would buy 3 for my family alone, just because I don't want to have to worry about expensive phones breaking.
20. Re:Any chance at getting one? by rolfwind · 2014-06-12 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  People can get a decent smartphone for under $80 here already, this one with no plan:
  http://www.walmart.com/ip/T-Mo...
  I've seen it under $70 just a while back but Walmart must cycle the prices every so often.
21. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:34 · Score: 0
  
  Wow! All of those seem pretty esoteric. Why do ordinary users buy newer, more expensive Android phones?
22. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Karlt1 · 2014-06-12 04:35 · Score: 1
  
  How about $100?
  Announcement post; https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/...
  US store: http://item.ebay.com/291125433...
  So why anyone get this instead of an Android device? There are plenty of usable Android devices for less than $100 (unsubsidized).
23. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:43 · Score: 0
  
  will be manufactured by two Indian companies,
  Really?
  Someone help me out here, but the latest item of consumer electronics to be manufactured in India was....?
  Help me out guys...I'm having a serious brain fart here...
24. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Blaskowicz · 2014-06-12 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  No plan but it's a "T-mobile", does that mean you buy a locked phone upfront?
25. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Threni · 2014-06-12 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly. And if you're getting one of these to play with, you've probably already got another one. And if you dont...well, these are going to seriously suck, just like all the other cheap Android tablets/phones have always sucked, with in the area of screen size, resolution, old version of android, insufficient ram to ensure speedy (even for the price) operation, crap build quality so you have to go through 2 or 3 to get a working one, etc. So you're going to regret it.
26. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Threni · 2014-06-12 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  2.3 is fine. Google Play Services still gets updated. Security risk? What security risk? Just don't download stuff from outside the Play Store, and don't root your phone if you're paranoid, and you'll be safe in the sandbox. All that other stuff is lost on most people (where most people = people who'll surf, email, phone, text, facebook etc).
27. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Stormwatch · 2014-06-12 05:26 · Score: 1
  
  Think you got it bad? Here in Brazil they sell a Firefox phone for $150, and any half-decent Android one goes for about $250.
  
  --
  Circumcision is child abuse.
28. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ArcadeMan · 2014-06-12 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  Searching for "LCD TFT SPI" on eBay.ca gives me quite a list of 2.2 inches displays with built-in SD/microSD socket, for only 6.00~6.50$CAD per unit (shipping included). Going up, you have 2.8" displays with touch screen for less than 20$CAD with shipping.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
29. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ArcadeMan · 2014-06-12 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  You have a house in 2014? You're rich.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
30. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ArcadeMan · 2014-06-12 05:40 · Score: 2
  
  Think you got it bad? Here in Canada they give us the phones for free but it requires a three years contract with a minimum monthly package of 80$.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
31. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 05:48 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, I've never used Google Play Services. I install only F-Droid apps.
32. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Lennie · 2014-06-12 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  Do you think Dell produces it's products in the US ?
  Is Dell a US company ?
  There is your answer.
  But in Brazil they do get produced locally, because import taxes are really high.
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
33. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Lennie · 2014-06-12 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  But they are not smartphones, they are feature phones.
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
34. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Lennie · 2014-06-12 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  "Why do ordinary users buy newer, more expensive Android phones?"
  The old one is broken.
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
35. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 07:20 · Score: 0
  
  It's his parents' basements.
36. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Pax681 · 2014-06-12 08:03 · Score: 2
  
  I predict they'll never be available in the US/UK for anything like that little money. There'll be taxes and import duty and this and that and....and it'll end up being 3 times that, and for the money you'd be able to buy something which less horrific performance. There's no profit in this for anyone - why bother in the first place?
  Nah .. at under £20 GBP it is under the import tax threshold.. so no import tax on this puppy for Scotland or the UK
37. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 08:12 · Score: 0
  
  So much for reading comprehension with a touch of sarcasm.
  Has nothing to do with specific company, but more the broad industrial capabilities.
  America has a very advanced manufacturing industry (doesn't matter about Dell, Apple, Boeing, ...).
  Anybody can name a long list of illustrious American manufactured products past and present.
  I seriously don't know of anything even remotely hightech (aside from some very basic products like stamped pots and pans, blank DVD, crude hand tools...), that the Indian industry is capable of producing.
38. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Pax681 · 2014-06-12 08:13 · Score: 1
  
  No plan but it's a "T-mobile", does that mean you buy a locked phone upfront?
  someone needs to brush up on their reading comprehension skills! ...
  what part of
  
  eBay exclusive ZTE OPEN C Latest Firefox OS 3G dual core Unlocked Smartphone
  
  do you fail to comprehend??
  http://item.ebay.com/291125433...
39. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Pax681 · 2014-06-12 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  sorry.. wrong link! here's the right one http://item.ebay.com/291125433...
40. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 11:00 · Score: 0
  
  Think you got it bad? In North Korea, ordinary citizens have never heard of cell phones or Mozilla.
41. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 11:23 · Score: 0
  
  Wow! All of those seem pretty esoteric.
  If you don't understand what they are and take them in isolation maybe, do you understand the impact they have on the user experience?
42. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fractoid · 2014-06-12 12:09 · Score: 1
  
  Think YOU got it bad? In Australia, we don't have a Glorious Leader.
  
  --
  Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
43. Re:Any chance at getting one? by fractoid · 2014-06-12 12:11 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't understand what they are in isolation, how would you know what impact they have?
  
  Anyway, half of them (accelerated UI, TRIM support) are "phone go faster" and the rest are all under-the-hood and your average pleb wouldn't know or care.
  
  --
  Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
44. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Stormwatch · 2014-06-12 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  Also, all the fauna is out to kill you.
  
  --
  Circumcision is child abuse.
45. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ChunderDownunder · 2014-06-12 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  Surely you jest, Tony is making a splash with O'Bama as we speak. :)
46. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ChunderDownunder · 2014-06-12 13:41 · Score: 1
  
  Mozilla aren't selling these.
  They have merely attracted the interest of *Indian* entrepreneurs to produce phones for the *Indian* market. Nothing stopping these guys from certifying these phones to worldwide standards and opening a webstore to ship internationally. Or partnering with Walmart to import 20,000 of them.
47. Re:Any chance at getting one? by ChunderDownunder · 2014-06-12 14:01 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, for the OS? None of those sub $100 Android devices, by definition, come with Firefox OS preinstalled.
  If you're asking why anyone would be curious to try Mozilla's platform, well that's a different question entirely.
48. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 17:43 · Score: 0
  
  Taxes,duties,etc are lower in the developed countries (UK,US,etc) than India
49. Re:Any chance at getting one? by Blaskowicz · 2014-06-12 20:42 · Score: 1
  
  What part of
  
  T-Mobile Pre-Paid Nokia Lumia 521 4G Smartphone
  did you fail to read?
  I think you mix up this thread with another one.
Because there's more to live by monkeyFuzz · 2014-06-12 02:26 · Score: 1

Be
Re: Because there's more to life... by monkeyFuzz · 2014-06-12 02:27 · Score: 1

Than profit.
Your wish is available now by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · 2014-06-12 02:49 · Score: 1

A mobile OS that isn't Apple's Garden of Pure Ideology, or linked directly to the mothership in Redmond if you actually want to do much of anything would also be nice to see.
Good morning, Mr. Rip Van Winkle. There are mobile phones that run an OS called Android that you seem not to have heard of but exactly meet your criteria. You might want to check that out. You can actually buy those in the USA right now.
1. Re:Your wish is available now by gstoddart · 2014-06-12 03:18 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Perhaps you missed the story yesterday where Google was making the app security on Android even less secure, and in such a way as to prevent users from disabling components which would block ads.
  Sure, you can install apps from other locations ... but there are some apps you can't install unless you root the phone.
  Google is no saint in this regard either. They have some illusions of open-ness, but they also ensure their advertising services and the like can't be selectively disabled.
  Hell, the very act of turning on the GPS in my Nexus 7 causes Google to prompt me to say yes to their own location services.
  Android stuff are almost as directly linked to that particular mothership as Apple or Microsoft.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
2. Re:Your wish is available now by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 03:19 · Score: 2
  
  My typo, I'm afraid (I meant Mountain View, though Windows Phone devices are tied pretty closely to Redmond); but Android solves the problem rather less than it pretends to.
  
  Unless you hack around and run bare AOSP, possibly with certain 3rd-party customizations, the percentage of 'Android' that is actually 'Google Play Services' increases with every version bump. A nontrivial percentage of even non-Google apps also build against Google-specific APIs, rather than the relatively impoverished Android ones (the rule of thumb seems to be that, once a role is added to GPS, the AOSP implementation more or less freezes at whatever state it was in and remains there), so incompatibility, even with the absolute freshest AOSP, is quite common.
  
  Google has the right to do as they wish with their OS, and at least you can buy it on handsets that aren't crypto locked to hell and back; but you'll be talking to the mothership soon enough.
3. Re:Your wish is available now by MightyYar · 2014-06-12 03:20 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Damn, you know you are right! I confused my Samsung with an iPhone because of the rounded corners.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
4. Re:Your wish is available now by Kjella · 2014-06-12 04:17 · Score: 2
  
  A nontrivial percentage of even non-Google apps also build against Google-specific APIs, rather than the relatively impoverished Android ones (the rule of thumb seems to be that, once a role is added to GPS, the AOSP implementation more or less freezes at whatever state it was in and remains there), so incompatibility, even with the absolute freshest AOSP, is quite common.
  Or the TL;DR version: Embrace, extend, extinguish. Companies are not your friends, they're temporary allies as the underdog seeks to become top dog but will abandon you when they no longer need your support. They make more money that way.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
5. Re:Your wish is available now by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:32 · Score: 0
  
  What makes you think Firefox OS will be any different?
6. Re:Your wish is available now by Lennie · 2014-06-12 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  It's an open source project backed by a non-profit that as it's only goal is: keeping the Internet open and accessible by anyone by improving, promoting the open web.
  Mozilla isn't perfect, but it might be the best we've got right now ?
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
7. Re:Your wish is available now by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-06-12 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  They also aren't exactly rolling in power in the smartphone sector. Even the most instinctively abusive people and institutions tend to avoid upsetting people when they don't have the power to avoid the consequences.
  
  Whether or not they turn on you later, if they gain power, is a matter of disposition or institutional culture; but making enemies and alienating people when you really can't afford it is something that only the stubborn and the doomed do.
8. Re:Your wish is available now by Lennie · 2014-06-12 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Ofcourse, but what is the alternative ?
  Multiple non-profits ?
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
9. Re:Your wish is available now by exomondo · 2014-06-12 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps you missed the story yesterday where Google was making the app security on Android even less secure, and in such a way as to prevent users from disabling components which would block ads.
  Perhaps you missed that Android is open source and there are many distributions that are not tied to Google. Are there iOS or Windows Phone distributions that are not tied to Apple or Microsoft? No.
10. Re:Your wish is available now by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 11:33 · Score: 0
  
  It's an open source project backed by a non-profit that as it's only goal is: keeping the Internet open and accessible by anyone by improving, promoting the open web.
  Yet they implemented closed DRM, so they don't stick to that goal.
  
  Mozilla isn't perfect, but it might be the best we've got right now ?
  We already have an open source smartphone operating system that doesn't need to be tied to a corporation, why do you think we need another one?
11. Re:Your wish is available now by Lennie · 2014-06-12 12:07 · Score: 1
  
  1. Technically they didn't implement closed DRM, they let others build a closed part and allow it to be run from Firefox
  2. You mean Android ? the Google services are getting more closed by the day and the open source components are lagging. Samsung is creating their own replacements. This seems like a good idea to you ?
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
12. Re:Your wish is available now by Blaskowicz · 2014-06-12 21:08 · Score: 1
  
  A friend wanted to record trips with the GPS, installed the official Google application ("MyTracks") and then the software demanded to be linked to one of two listed email addresses (xxxxx@gmail.com)
  So we uninstalled it and he forego'ed using the GPS (except for that "navigation in google maps" thing). Huh, that is fucking ridiculous. Even a non technical user sensed there's something wrong to require all your GPS readings be sent to a third party. Next time Google will sell pornography that plays only if you share the history and precise times publicly on Google+ with your real name.
  All was wanted is offline data to process/look at on the big desktop PC later (such as showing areas visited, in Google Earth)
What about Apps ? by singhv · 2014-06-12 02:51 · Score: 3, Informative

So developers have to start building apps for this OS ? There are $75 smartphones with android OS available in India. Windows-Nokia phone have not been able to catch up in the India although Nokia was leader at one point of time
1. Re:What about Apps ? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:03 · Score: 0
  
  WebGL, Html5, etc. No need to relearn an API.
2. Re:What about Apps ? by Blaskowicz · 2014-06-12 05:15 · Score: 1
  
  If you never learnt HTML5, CSS, Javascript and the DOM etc. then you still have to learn them.
  Hell, web development has all that, plus one or more back end languages (PHP, Python, Node.js etc.), plus paying for a host and setting up a server. It's a lot more complicated than say, Visual Basic.
  It's probably worth it if you want to write an "app" and its back end and have the stuff accessible from a desktop PC as well (or the browser on other kinds of mobile phones)
3. Re:What about Apps ? by Lennie · 2014-06-12 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Webapps don't need a server.
  All you need is for it to not depend on a server (by using the HTML5 Offline cache) and add a manifest file:
  http://davidwalsh.name/firefox...
  
  --
  New things are always on the horizon
4. Re:What about Apps ? by Blaskowicz · 2014-06-12 16:54 · Score: 1
  
  thanks for that link
For the Fi-curious by NotFamous · 2014-06-12 03:01 · Score: 5, Informative

You can get a Firefox phone right now, available for use in Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States. It is $99, and comes with a 4-inch screen, dual core 1.2Ghz and 512MB RAM. It is the ZTE Open C, available on eBay. Just search for Firefox OS, and you'll find it.They link to it from the Firefox OS site. http://item.ebay.com/291125433...

--
Some settling may occur during posting.
1. Re:For the Fi-curious by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 04:05 · Score: 0
  
  Why can't I have the $25 one? Not everyone in America is rich...
2. Re:For the Fi-curious by rewarp · 2014-06-12 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  I own an Open C. But at $25. Even I would want to get another phone just to have more stuff to fool around with. For example, trying to get Ubuntu or Sailfish running.
  
  --
  In adding a sig, for no other reason, than for aesthetics.
3. Re:For the Fi-curious by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 05:42 · Score: 0
  
  Because the cost of making it available in the US would make it not worth their time at that price point. They'll need to ship it across an ocean, pay trade tariffs, and handle support for US customers. All of that means added cost, and the US market will expect higher quality for anything called a "smartphone", and the market segment that will buy a $25 phone but not a $100 phone is small.
4. Re:For the Fi-curious by ChunderDownunder · 2014-06-12 13:56 · Score: 1
  
  It's a phone built for Indians by Indians. If you reside outside of India, you'll have to find someone within that country to post it to you.
Re: Because there's more to life... by Threni · 2014-06-12 05:03 · Score: 1

Sure. There are many people working to ensure that people in developing countries have access to education, water, immunisation etc. And now, uh..mobile phone? I mean, let's be honest - that's usually done for profit, so that the guys in suits get money, and so that the company sticks around long enough to fix the inevitable bugs, release a second version etc.
FireFox OS by Psicopatico · 2014-06-12 07:08 · Score: 2

FireFox OS is an ok OS.
Pity it lacks a decent browser...
(Sorry, but that HAS to be written)

--
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
1. Re:FireFox OS by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 07:37 · Score: 0
  
  Firefox sucks balls
Don't link to paywalled articles! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-12 07:58 · Score: 0

If a web site wants to put its articles behind a paywall, DON'T LINK TO THEM! Let isolated web sites behind paywalls die a natural death. Don't publicize them. Don't drive traffic to them. The web was designed to be open, and to allow us to link to pages and read them. Unnatural paywalls block the flow of ideas, and we should route around them.
Both manufacturer are not worth of good hardware by jangid.d473 · 2014-06-12 15:33 · Score: 1

Firefox should have taken care of this and in place of "Intex" and "Spice" they should have gone with someone like "Micromax" which have some reputation of manufacturing some good hardware. This can lead to a bad impression on first buyers, geeks and me.
A nice lady who speaks really bad English... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-13 01:48 · Score: 0

... will keep calling you on it to tell you there is a virus on your Windows.
Places to use cheap phone by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-14 13:23 · Score: 0

There's a lot of situations where having a cheap phone that doesn't cost so much to replace could come in useful.
Yeah, like for my wife, the bathtub.