Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 121 posts

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#51

Post by happyscrappy »

rlpb wrote: post #3

There was a review the other day at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-... (I think this was from HN). I was interested to see how they defined "growth" in revenue figures. It's disappointing to see that they're only stating launches, rather than sales and return figures, and calling that growth. But perhaps it's too early to get real figures right now.

Ouch:

The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, have you seen how cheap it is? It's $35. Off contract. That's like, really cheap.

The Bad •The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the Cloud FX, and most of the device's really serious problems come from running software on hardware that feels well below the minimum spec. •The software (again). •The keyboard—No multitouch, no auto correct, no copy/paste. Press "Q" and "P" at the same time and the keyboard registers "Y." This ruins e-mail, searching, texting, typing URLs, and lots of other stuff. •The memory—The phone constantly runs out of memory and can't multitask. Critical background features like the alarm and checking e-mail don't work because the phone is always out of memory. •The screen—The viewing angles are terrible, and in landscape the shimmery-ness of the display is headache-inducing. •The storage—There isn't any. •The modem—You get Edge data. No 3G. Don't even ask about 4G. •The camera—Pictures look more like impressionist watercolor paintings rather than scene recreations. •The build quality—Ultra-cheap, ultra-plasticky build quality. •The performance—Performance is really inconsistent, but it ranges from moderately slow to I-think-I-need-to-reboot-this slow. •It can't keep time. There's no battery backup for the time, so if the phone resets or runs out of battery, the time defaults to last century. This silently breaks all apps that use a secure connection. •There's no GPS. •Firefox crashes all the time.

The Ugly •Anyone who had this as their first smartphone would swear off smartphones forever.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#52

Post by jonknee »

gambiting wrote: post #13
milankragujevic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It's actually $33, also in developing countries nobody pays more than $0.01 for a phone on contract.

I'm from a developed country and I don't know anyone who pays for a phone on top of the contract price. It baffles me how in US people get a $50/month contract + they have to pay $200 for the phone. Crazy.

Because the phones are $600? At $50/mo it would take an entire year to pay for just the phone before any revenue could be used for actual operator business.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#53

Post by icebraining »

freehunter wrote: post #42
agumonkey wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Android Apps run on Dalvik/ART, which is not HTML5/js but I agree, it's not a real difference, except in FirefoxOS marketing strategy, targetting ultra low end devices with heavy (heavier than ART) apps will result in an absurdly unusable system.

Well what I was trying to say is, Firefox OS apps are just web pages. Saying that an Android user is locked into the Play store unlike a Firefox OS user seems silly, because you don't need a single Android app installed to mimic the functionality of Firefox OS. All you need is the browser.

No, because Firefox OS apps are web pages with benefits :)

In particular, they can be bundled to be used offline, and they can get access to a whole host of device APIs, which I don't believe are accessible to any web apps on Chrome for Android: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissio...

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#55

Post by gambiting »

jonknee wrote: post #52
gambiting wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a developed country and I don't know anyone who pays for a phone on top of the contract price. It baffles me how in US people get a $50/month contract + they have to pay $200 for the phone. Crazy.

Because the phones are $600? At $50/mo it would take an entire year to pay for just the phone before any revenue could be used for actual operator business.

Yeah. That's exactly how it works. Me and all my friends have top-models of different brands, and I don't know a single person who paid anything upfront. HTC One here - 30 pounds a month contract. Iphone 5S - 35 pounds a month contract. LG G3 - 28 pounds a month. All of these prices roughly translate into $50/month - so why would you pay anything upfront?? And just because a phone costs $600 on the retail market don't assume that operators pay anywhere near that.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#56

Post by srcmap »

muyuu wrote: post #37
rjaco31 wrote: post #16

What the fuck? the price of the article is '$25', and all the links they give show a 80€ => $100 tag price... http://www.materiel.net/smartphone/?f[11037]=Firefox+OS http://www.cdiscount.com/telephonie/telephone-mobile/zte-ope... http://www.rueducommerce.fr/Telephonie/Smartphone/Smartphone... http://www.webdistrib.com/cat/Smartphone-ZTE-Open-C-Night-Bl... http://www.ldlc.com/telephonie-gps/telephonie-portable/mobil..…

Is is the same as the ZTE Open C Firefox Phone? because I tried it and it's pitiful. IIRC it's £60 in the UK. Don't bother with that phone, it's useless.

Form the point of view of the folks who never use a smart phone before, this $35 phone is probably very good.

Just as win3.1 might be very good for someone who only use DOS before.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#57

Post by regularfry »

gambiting wrote: post #33
regularfry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might think that, but you've got to be careful not to let old phones update. I've got a Galaxy S2 I use mainly as a wifi hotspot with a data-only sim, and while it used to have a pretty snappy UI, these days it really crawls, almost to the point of being unusable. To be honest I've not looked particularly hard at why this is, but how well a phone runs a browser, for instance, isn't frozen in time when the phone i…

You are absolutely right, but a phone that is few years old and has 512MB of ram is going to load pages faster than this new $35 firefox OS phone which only has 128MB.

Could go either way, I reckon. I've got no idea what the relative CPU speeds are, for a start. At some point the newer phone will start to make sense.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#58

Post by JoeAltmaier »

happyscrappy wrote: post #51
rlpb wrote: post #3

There was a review the other day at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-... (I think this was from HN). I was interested to see how they defined "growth" in revenue figures. It's disappointing to see that they're only stating launches, rather than sales and return figures, and calling that growth. But perhaps it's too early to get real figures right now.

Ouch: The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, have you seen how cheap it is? It's $35. Off contract. That's like, really cheap. The Bad •The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the C…

Much of the bad is cultural. Americans are impatient with devices, and feel frustration/anger when they don't get instant gratification.

Others are more adaptable, more patient, and content to learn to use the device as it must be used to work correctly.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#59

Post by happyscrappy »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #58
happyscrappy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch: The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, have you seen how cheap it is? It's $35. Off contract. That's like, really cheap. The Bad •The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the C…

Much of the bad is cultural. Americans are impatient with devices, and feel frustration/anger when they don't get instant gratification. Others are more adaptable, more patient, and content to learn to use the device as it must be used to work correctly.

Job would smash this phone, at least he would only be out $35.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#60

Post by regularfry »

dscrd wrote: post #31

Is there some technical detail in Firefox OS that makes it a good choice for cheap phones? I've come to understand that it's not particularly lightweight, but am I wrong?

Maybe not a technical detail per se, but as far as I can tell they're gambling on not having to pay the usual Android patent license costs to the likes of Microsoft.
Post reply on HN