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Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

zdnet.com

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Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#11

Post by binarymax »

ux-app wrote: post #6

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 phonegap or sencha)...so a giant influx of good apps is not far off. And best of all, its built to open standards with no walled garden.

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#12

Post by gizzlon »

kokey wrote: post #2

Interesting, and I'm hopeful. Though I'm not so sure about what he's saying about Android phones from China. I've bought some cheap Chinese 'smartphones' before and they were unusably bad. Perhaps there are better, Android based, models around nowadays.

What did you buy? And from where?

Just looked at dx.com and they have a lot.. but not too many with android 4

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#13

Post by cji »

doe88 wrote: post #5

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/

Mozilla has a list of supported devices (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/...), with the geeksphone devices being in Tier 1 support, and a couple of Android phones in Tier 2/3.

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#14

Post by doe88 »

cji wrote: post #13
doe88 wrote: post #5

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/

Mozilla has a list of supported devices ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/... ), with the geeksphone devices being in Tier 1 support, and a couple of Android phones in Tier 2/3.

Thanks for the link it's very helpful.

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#15

Post by doe88 »

binarymax wrote: post #9
doe88 wrote: post #5

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/

I bought a keon when the shop first opened and received it last week. Since I've had it, I was able to update the OS on the phone itself. I didn't even need to plug it into a PC. It was slick.

Ah Great to know, I'm really tempted by the Keon.

[edit] I decided to buy it, but they seem to not have many stocks, it's currently out of stock for both models.

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#16

Post by wcchandler »

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.

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#17

Post by yareally »

markokocic wrote: post #8
mtgx wrote: post #7

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.

If going by the stats that Xamarin gave[1] for Dalvik versus Mono on Android 4.0, Dalvik is also much slower than Mono. Though obviously Xamarin is not the most independent source in the findings, but I would believe it to outperform Dalvik in my own uses of both it and Dalvik for Android apps (I bought a license for it 6 months ago).

There's also some results by Koush Dutta[1] (Cyanogenmod contributer and Clockwork Recovery developer) from 2009 showing similar findings, though obviously that's way old and before Dalvik had JIT added in Android 2.2. We had a discussion sometime ago about that article on hn as well[3]

[1] http://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/

[2] http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/dalvik-vs-mono.html

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=421862

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#19

Post by shardling »

elliottkember wrote: post #18

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.

The preview is supposed to give you an idea of how it will function on real world low-end devices, so sounds like that's working, at least. :)

Re: Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach

#20

Post by kevingadd »

elliottkember wrote: post #18

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?
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