21–30 of 36 posts
It'll be interesting to see how these "alternative" OSes perform in developing countries -- namely, those in Africa. I'm just glad to see the GPL being able to help harbor an emerging product without shooting themselves in the foot. They're providing third party compatibility, while still trying to tackle a completely different market. It's quite wonderful to see.
We'll see how "good" it is. I'm very skeptical about a Javascript-heavy OS being as good as an Android one on the same hardware. If all things are equal, it shouldn't be. However, I suppose Firefox OS will be more "feature-free" in the beginning, and those HTML5 apps will be a lot simpler than the typical native app, and these two things might compensate for the slower speed of Javascript. We'll see.
We'll see how "good" it is. I'm very skeptical about a Javascript-heavy OS being as good as an Android one on the same hardware. If all things are equal, it shouldn't be. However, I suppose Firefox OS will be more "feature-free" in the beginning, and those HTML5 apps will be a lot simpler than the typical native app, and these two things might compensate for the slower speed of Javascript. We'll see.
Well, Dalvik is not a speed deamon. I don't have any benchmarks on actual phone hardware available, but I can guess that javascript code will not run much slower on phone hardware than on desktop comparable desktop browsers, while Dalvik is a waaay slover than regular Java code on desktop.
The biggest issue JavaScript+HTML has is memory usage. Cheap phones don't have much memory and Java on Dalvik is much more memory efficient.
Interesting, I think I'm interrested in getting one of these devices [1]. I'm wondering though if there are currently the only (preview) devices supporting Firefox OS? And if there are officially supported by Mozilla and will continue to officialy receive software updates in the near future? (I don't want to buy a device useless in 4 months). [1] http://www.geeksphone.com/
We'll see how "good" it is. I'm very skeptical about a Javascript-heavy OS being as good as an Android one on the same hardware. If all things are equal, it shouldn't be. However, I suppose Firefox OS will be more "feature-free" in the beginning, and those HTML5 apps will be a lot simpler than the typical native app, and these two things might compensate for the slower speed of Javascript. We'll see.
In any case, the language being used on the OS has next to no bearing on the actual performance. How can you know that JavaScript is slower than Java? The devil is in the details- i.e., the implementation.
I briefly played with a FirefoxOS Phone at Linuxfest Northwest and it was more responsive than my old Motorola X2. I ran a few of the pre-installed apps and took a picture with the camera and it worked as expected.
I have a feeling Firefox OS is going to be big. from what I've seen of YouTube demos the OS is quite responsive on modest hardware (gs2 and nexus s). I've had no luck this week trying to build the OS for a gs2. I'm hopeful that I'll have more success compiling for a nexus s.
Yes, I think so too. There was a big gap left open when WebOS was mercilessly killed off by HP, and I really wanted to see WebOS succeed. Firefox OS is great so far, it has its quirks but its still very early days. There is no question in my mind that it will be a serious contender. There are so many devs out there who just want to code for one platform (web) and cant be bothered to go native (ask anyone using phoneg…
I tried one of these phones last week. It was awful. No innovation, slow/juddery animations, bad UX. Granted it's a developer preview, but based on the preview I wouldn't develop for it.
How does it compare to the $100 retail iPhones and Android phones you've used?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it compare to the $100 retail iPhones and Android phones you've used?
Even if you buy a cheap plane ticket from Ryanair, you’re allowed to complain if only one of the two engines work.