Slashdot Mirror
Test-Driving a $35 Firefox OS Smartphone
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica got its hands on one of the extremely low-cost smart phones running Firefox OS. The Intex Cloud FX retails for about $35 in India, and its intent is to bring smartphones to people who traditionally can't afford them. So, what do you have to sacrifice to bring a smartphone's costs down that far? Well, it has a 3.5" 480x320 display, a 1Ghz A5 CPU, 128MB of RAM, and 256 MB of storage. (Those a megabytes.) There's no GPS, no notification LED, and not even 3G support. They say the build quality is as poor as you'd expect, and if you aren't at a 90 degree angle with the screen, colors are distorted. But, again: it's $35 — this is to be expected.
How well does the phone work? Well, the UI works well enough, but multitasking is rough. Everything's functional, but slow, sometimes taking several seconds to register touch input. The real killer, according to the article, is the on-screen keyboard, which is unbearable. The article concludes, "Sure, we're spoiled, "rich" people compared to the target market, but it's hard to believe that this is a "best attempt" at a cheap smartphone. ... The problem is that Firefox OS just isn't the right choice of operating system for this device—it's trying to do way too much with the limited hardware. It isn't configurable enough." They say the phone doesn't even make sense for a $35 budget.
How well does the phone work? Well, the UI works well enough, but multitasking is rough. Everything's functional, but slow, sometimes taking several seconds to register touch input. The real killer, according to the article, is the on-screen keyboard, which is unbearable. The article concludes, "Sure, we're spoiled, "rich" people compared to the target market, but it's hard to believe that this is a "best attempt" at a cheap smartphone. ... The problem is that Firefox OS just isn't the right choice of operating system for this device—it's trying to do way too much with the limited hardware. It isn't configurable enough." They say the phone doesn't even make sense for a $35 budget.
Looks like you have absolutely no experience in designing mobile devices. Arguments like "as cheap as RAM is" are bullshit. If you're not so big that you can design your own chips or at least be taken into consideration by manufacturers, you simply have to live with whatever is available on the market in quantities you need (and most of the options used by big gamers aren't even available on free market). For smaller projects (and I can imagine for a project like that with "as cheap as possible" constraint it's true as well), you're often limited to just a few SoC options, which in turn limit you further on available RAM packages (which aren't standardized in any way).
I'm working on Neo900 project and I know that finding 1GB PoP for DM3730 which wouldn't handicap our ability to connect NAND memory as well was a nightmare - and 1GB is actually hard limit on OMAP3 which was utilized only by a few devices out there. BTW, OMAP3's Cortex-A8 was actually meant for higher-end devices than A5 used in this phone.