I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.
I help a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are not all that tech literate, and get asked a lot for recommendations, and I definitely think there is a niche for something between feature phones and smart phones. A lot of people are not interested in putting in the investment of time and money to get up to pace using Android or an iPhone. There's quite a big step to using those devices, for instance in managing data use, or in the way that phone functions recede amongst new smartphone features. With Android as a new user you can even for all intents and purposes lose your dialler, by pressing and holding the icon incorrectly.<p>iOS isn't interested in meeting that market, because of low cost, and if they did attempt it both Android and iOS might well suffer in trying to alter and dilute their brands and the unity of their interfaces.<p>It also works quite well as an target market, because a lot of the apps that would be expected are quite simple, and shouldn't be too difficult to create using web technologies - maybe news or magazine apps, cinema or TV listings, weather and so on.<p>Combine the right interface with a price of £50-£100, a good battery life, and a credible promise over security and privacy, and it definitely seems like an option which could get into the retail stores, and a place in the market of perhaps 2-3%, which is a good place to start.
Got to try a Firefox OS phone (or three) last week at a short hackathon in Telefonica Digital's offices in London.<p>The first device I tried (and apparently the one with the beefiest hardware) was an Alcatel One Touch Fire. My enthusiasm took a sharp turn downward from the moment I unlocked the device; accomplished by sliding the screen left to right, the animation was jerky, did not track my finger accurately, and skipped to the end when I let go of the screen halfway through the width of the screen.<p>One of the hosts was quick to point out that the lock screen interaction was actually custom programmed by Alcatel, and so is the rest of the user interface, at which point he pointed to try a different device running something closer to "stock Firefox OS."<p>I'm enthralled by the promise of helping the web win by creating a device category where the web is a first-class citizen, but I'm doubtful it will happen if manufacturers outsource their tasteless UI customizations to web dev interns.<p>Sunspider came out at roughly 1600ms, which places the mid-2013 Alcatel somewhere in the performance bracket of an iPhone 4 (mid-2010, flagship device). Despite the rough benchmarks, I ran some Famo.us demos and they were surprisingly usable, and I could easily get a physics-backed drag interaction to run smoothly inside the browser.<p>I'm waiting to try out a Firefox OS phone with cutting edge hardware.
It has definitely been an up-hill battle for Firefox OS trying to gain market share, but I think everyone (including Mozilla) expected that. Having played with one of their earlier test units and the newer Firefox Flame with FFOS 2.0, it has come a long way. Even our Android-obsessed designer loves the Flame.<p>It's a tough situation to be in where they need to improve the quality of the ecosystem, but need users to convince the big-wig devs to developer for the OS. The total user numbers we've seen from them is certainly better than we expected, but still too small to convince a major developer to build for Firefox OS on numbers alone.<p>If their platform wasn't the web, I'm not sure they'd have much of a chance at success, but being able to convince a developer the values of building for the web is much easier than building for a fairly new mobile OS.
What is the <i>official</i> way to learn about Firefox OS releases? I can't figure out which version of FxOS has which status, despite being subscribed to mailing lists.<p>Flame update page [1] has images for 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 3.0. LG/KDDI Fx0 has apparently shipped in Japan with version 2.0 [2] on December 25, 2014. All this suggests that at least version 2.0 <i>has</i> been released. Yet Wikipedia page [3] doesn't have release date for version 2.0 onwards, and I don't know where else to look.<p>[1] MDN: Updating your Flame <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/Flame/Updating_your_Flame" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/F...</a><p>[2] Mozilla Press Center: Mozilla and KDDI Launch First Firefox OS Smartphone in Japan <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/mozilla-and-kddi-launch-first-firefox-os-smartphone-in-japan-4/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/mozilla-and-kddi-laun...</a><p>[3] Wikipedia: Firefox OS | Release history <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Release_history" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Release_history</a>
Firefox OS, being based on HTML/CSS/JavaScript, sounds a lot more hackable than Android to me. Well, you can hack Android pretty heavily - forking CyanogenMod, writing Xposed plugins, etc., but Java is just obscure and the compile/deploy/debug cycle is too cumbersome for casual hacking.<p>Hence I look forward to Firefox OS as platform I can easily hack, but I am not sure whether it really is. Could someone with experience tell me:<p>* How easy is it to deploy a FxOS app? How is the remote debugging experience?<p>* How easy is it to hack the core apps (e.g. phone, SMS)?<p>* How easy is it to hack the "framework" (e.g. window manager, status bar)? Is it even written in JavaScript?
I really wish to see a great third mobile OS with a marketshare in the two digits.
I appreciate the spirit behind FFOS, so I would like to see it take that place. I am not sure of how they want to achieve that though.
However, AFAIK, FFOS does not really bring anything new to the table, so I have trouble seeing how it could make an impact in the first-world.
Here's what Mozilla needs to "fix" in Firefox OS IMO:<p>- have real browser. Seriously. Firefox on Android is a <i>much</i> better browser.<p>- handle the software, and the updates, Microsoft-style. Maybe have OEMs pay for this service, maybe involve the community. Seriously, all Firefox OS devices sold have an ancient version of the OS. It means I'm safer when I'm using Firefox on Android than when I'm using a Firefox OS phone.
I understand the tradeoffs that led them to this decision (their dependency on the Android stack for example), but they seriously need to rethink it.<p>- allow for native code to run. I know it's hard. Even Google with it's uber-optimized (or so they thought at the time) Dalvik (for small phones) understood the need for the NDK. I'm not sure asm.js can cut it, as I've yet to see console-class games on Firefox OS like there are on Android and iOS.<p>- Of course, they need to continue their groundwork on APIs. There shouldn't be a thing you can do on say, iOS or WP and not in Firefox OS (and I'm not saying Android because it gives a <i>lot</i> of power to developers).<p>- They need a flagship phone, for everyone. Not a "developer phone" (although it can act as one), but a real flagship.
Firefox OS is a great idea, and if it was 2010 it would probably stand a good chance at succeeding with the correct launch strategy. But its not 2010.<p>This weekend I had a chance to play with a Jolla smartphone. Hardware wise it pretty good, and had some really good ideas, but the software was half baked. While in time both Jolla and Firefox OS could become great products, but time ran out a while back.<p>You now have to come to market with all the pieces (and then some). You can't adopt the "build it and they will come mantra" because unless you can give users a compelling reason to switch without losing functionality they won't come. The hardware wars are long gone. The app wars ended a few years back. We are now in the ecosystem wars and Mozilla (and Jolla) appear to have no answers for this (or have answers "coming soon").<p>The sad fact is that from here on out it's iOS and Android in a tussle neither can win, and unless the phone market resets itself like it did in 2007 there is very little anybody else can do.
I was given a Firefox OS phone at Mozfest last year. I lost my other phone earlier this year and so used it exclusively for four weeks. I'm sorry to say it's pretty terrible at this stage. I was using v2 of Firefox OS.<p>The problems are broadly that it was slow, unreliable and poorly designed. It would just become completely unresponsive a couple of times a week, requiring the battery to be removed to restart. There are very few well known apps. Twitter seems to be the only one, and it was so slow for scrolling that I gave up using it. The included apps were just placeholders to install apps, almost all of them only worked online. I wouldn't recommend getting one to anybody. I'm sure you could buy a cheap secondhand Android and have a better experience. It was worse than Android 1.6.<p>There's such a huge mountain of work for the Mozilla developers to get this to be in anyway competitive to Android. I think Mozilla would be better to concentrate their resources elsewhere.
>programmers could write an app just once with Web technologies that span not just iOS, Android, and Firefox OS, but also Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, Tizen, Ubuntu and any other mobile operating system that arrives tomorrow.<p>This, to me, is the most powerful prospect of Firefox OS.<p>I have been "writing apps" in HTML, Javascript and PHP ever since I can remember.<p>They are just as responsive and useful as any app I have ever used on my Android. Which works fine, but had recently been creeping the heck out of me because it's distributed by Google.<p>Every app is virtually a simple website imho. Look at google docs, for example. Angry birds could easily be written in javascript. As could flappy bird, and virtually every game I can think of.<p>I see no reason to bother writing a piece of software that can only be used on Androir or iOS, except for sheer greed, so I haven't. It's worked out well for me so far.<p>Here's to hoping Firefox OS comes to the first world sooner rather than later.
I hope Mozilla make a phone aimed at tech first movers (hacker news crowd etc), we seem to be the most likely to support attempts at openness. It would have to be high end though. A bit like Ubuntu tried to do with the Edge.
I'd rather they'd push Firefox on Android more. Firefox OS seems stillborn, but Firefox/Android is a good product and mobile could need more browser competition.
I really respect Firefox OS for being fully open, but I dislike the lack of native applications. I wish normal glibc Linux mobile distros (not Android) would gain more traction. Sailfish OS is great, but they don't seem to be interested in opening up the UI and most of the core applications.
If you want to improve the quality of Firefox, there is a simple way to do it, just download Firefox Beta for Android and Firefox Beta for your computer, it's helping them to improve the quality of the stable releases.<p>It's a really easy step to help Mozilla without changing anything to your habits.
I would love to try a firefox OS phone.<p>Verizon seems like an odd choice in the U.S., to me they seem like a 'premium' brand somewhat more expensive than their competitors, while Firefox OS, at least prior to know, seems to have been positioning itself as a budget option.
Firefox is going to have to fight to get any kind of market share. As Microsoft has shown, you can have great hardware, great interface and tonnes of money behind you, but it does not buy you market share. As long as Mozilla is prepared for the uphill battle they are about to fight, I think they might have a chance.<p>They really need to carve out a niche like they've done in non first-world countries. Merely being the same as Android or iOS is not going to be enough. They need to get developers on board, but even so, will they have the games that most consumers like to play?<p>It's a tricky situation, but one nonetheless I am excited to see what happens from.
A strong opportunity for FirefoxOS growth is supporting ad-hoc and mesh link layers and providing an intelligent APIs that support that access without compromising security.<p>It's the anti-Google, anti-carrier, anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, anti-government, pro-efficiency, pro-security, pro-developing world feature everyone wants but nobody can have because none of the mobile OSs support it.<p>Read bug+PDF @ <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945047" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945047</a>
I hope Mozilla puts Servo into Firefox OS sooner rather than later. Same for rebuilding the whole thing in Rust, although that will probably last 3+ years.
I really want to support Firefox OS and abandon Android. But Mozilla keeps missing the mark as far as I'm concerned. I don't want a flip phone, or a low-spec phone, or one that's only available in Japan. I just want something with a decent quad-core and more than 1gb of ram that I can purchase in the US and that will come with a warranty.
OT: Hmm, something seems very wrong with that CNET page. It loads ok but it's unreadable on iOS.<p>As soon as I try to scroll it goes haywire. Anyone else seeing that or have a link to a static version?
I can't see how this would go well. Chrome OS has been a big flop, and pushing that onto phones is just going to pile more disadvantages on top of that.<p>The everything-as-a-website concept is fatally flawed anyway, as while it is often possible to find a single-purpose site to do a specific thing such as converting file formats, you're completely at the mercy of an unknown third party and their privacy policy (as well as promise not to tamper with your file) if you do. It's a privacy disaster waiting to happen. That, and javascript is a horrible and inefficient language not fit for purpose even years ago, so certainly not on devices with weak CPUs and limited battery.
"front" ... "war"?! Mozilla is taking a knife to a gunfight with the 800 pound gorillas out there. This is going to be a really long and bloody war ... NOT.