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Slashdot Asks: Does the World Need a Third Mobile OS?

Posted by msmash on from the in-an-ideal-world dept.

Now that it is evident that Microsoft doesn't see any future with Windows Phone (or Windows 10 Mobile), it has become clear that there is no real, or potential competitor left to fight Android and iOS for a slice of the mobile operating system market. Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either. BlackBerry's BBOS also couldn't find enough taker. Ideally, the market is more consumer friendly when there are more than one or two dominant forces. Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?

4 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. It may not come from the USA by GlobalEcho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing we have seen is that it is a tremendously expensive undertaking. The Android example shows how difficult it is to handle the unruly mob of independent manufacturers, so I think we will see such an OS one day, but that it will follow the Apple model of integrated hardware and software.

    The market demand in the US and Europe is not terribly high for such a beast, but I could easily see, say, China or Korea deciding that having a new platform was of strategic value. Samsung has even tried it already.

    In China, for example, if it were announced today that Android and iOS were going to be forbidden starting in 2021, you would have a pretty complete alternative ecosystem by then.

  2. Purism by Checkered+Daemon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hopefully Purism, with their Librem phone and PureOS, will survive, if only as a niche product. Designed to be a super secure phone based on Debian.

    https://puri.sm/

  3. Firefox OS failed because it was terrible! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either.

    Of course it didn't work out. The evidence suggests that that's because Firefox OS was just bad software.

    This review of Firefox OS gives some insight into how bad Firefox OS was.

    Before you blame the hardware, read some of the things that the review says about the Firefox OS software:

    When the time gets reset, you can't connect to the Firefox OS marketplace and download an app, you can't pull your e-mail over POP or IMAP, and every secure webpage will throw up an error.

    The time won't sync over Wi-Fi, either.

    In theory, Firefox OS can multitask, but thanks to a combination of failings in Firefox OS and in the hardware, you'll never have an app run in the background on the Cloud FX.

    The other problem is that when Firefox OS does run out of memory, it closes apps without doing anything to preserve their state or to keep critical background tasks running.

    If the lock screen pops up while reading a webpage, you'll need to reload the page again.

    If you start the stopwatch and leave the app, the stopwatch stops.

    You can set the e-mail app to check for mail every five minutes, but there is never any free memory, so the mail check never runs.

    There isn't even anything to keep the crucial alarm process alive. If the phone is busy when an alarm is supposed to go off, it just doesn't go off. An alarm you can't trust to work 100 percent of the time is useless.

    Firefox OS really makes no distinction between the two, leaving it up to the user to figure out what will work offline and what won't.

    Solitaire, for instance, is "pre-loaded" in that there is an icon that ships with the OS, but it's just a Web app that needs an Internet connection.

    You won't find much in the way of apps for Firefox OS. There's basically nothing "custom made" other than a small handful of utilities. Most "apps" in the Marketplace are just bookmarks that users could make themselves.

    The keyboard doesn't support multitouch, so you if press "Q" and "P" at the same time it splits the difference between the touch points and enters "Y."

    You would think Firefox OS would have a killer browser that could easily run browser-based benchmarks, but they all crash.

    When Firefox runs out of memory, it should do something other than crash.

    That kind of nonsense is inexcusable. It's no wonder that a product with such problems didn't succeed!

  4. Re: Answer precedes the question by Stormwatch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not denying Nokia's internal mess, but ultimately they did release a MeeGo device, two months before their first WP device. So they didn't need someone else's system after all. MeeGo was ready on time! And it got stellar reviews! If they had pushed it with all their might, it could have been a strong contender against Android.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.