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KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

kaiostech.com

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Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#101

Post by zitterbewegung »

bobajeff wrote: post #97
culot wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently KaiOS is a fork of Firefox OS/B2G. So... where's the code, yo? I've scoured Github, but no sign of it. edit: nevermind: "KaiOS is based on the Firefox OS open-source project and we are committed to abide by the rules of the applicable open source licenses. Therefore, we’ll make the source code available to the extent required by the applicable open source licenses." So that's a no on giving back to the B2G…

Checking out the site it looks like they are targeting feature phones and they appear to be quite successful at it. Which is funny because Mozilla tried that shortly before abandoning the whole project.

I wonder where some of those people went when then? Did they move to Kai os or not?

Or maybe the phone partners figured out that they could run the project themselves and when mozilla axed it they just moved on.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#102

Post by bobajeff »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #101
bobajeff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking out the site it looks like they are targeting feature phones and they appear to be quite successful at it. Which is funny because Mozilla tried that shortly before abandoning the whole project.

I wonder where some of those people went when then? Did they move to Kai os or not? Or maybe the phone partners figured out that they could run the project themselves and when mozilla axed it they just moved on.

Well, some of them went to Acadine Technologies to work on H5OS.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#103

Post by johndoe90 »

beeflaw wrote: post #58
cwyers wrote: post #49

Competing with the Android/iOS duopoly was a war of attrition the Microsoft, Firefox, Canonical and Samsung (Tizen) all lost. If you don't have the resources that those companies do I have a hard time seeing how you survive, and I have no interest in investing in a platform that has an extremely high risk of being orphaned. I wish it was otherwise - earlier today I was lamenting that my Samsung Galaxy S7 is laggier a…

How do you define success? This is not a competitor to iOS/Android, it's for cheap low-end devices, which is still a sizable market. Try running Android on 256MB of RAM...

I still have a ZTE Open C with me. It has 512MB of RAM and 2-core CPU.

It's been running on the Firefox OS quite slow. Having in mind a very poor functionality, I considered to switch to Android. When I installed Android, it was a total game changer. It was fast and smooth (back in 2014 of course, not now) and I never installed Firefox OS again.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#104

Post by mirimir »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #41
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the device…

An open alternative is the goal of the Librem phone from Purism.

Does it use closed-source firmware in the radio baseband? And is there a physical switch between the baseband and main system board?

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#105

Post by u801e »

acabal wrote: post #35
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebOS was open sourced years ago. And a community even ported it to the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7, to the point that I believe there was even the ability to make phone calls. But it never got any momentum and the community seems to have fizzled out.

Man, WebOS was truly excellent. I had a Palm Pre back in the day and to this day there are moments when I'm using Android and I wish I was using WebOS instead. It had such a natural interface for multitasking too. Unrelated to WebOS, but the Pre's wireless charging accessory is IMHO still the best to date.

> [WebOS] had such a natural interface for multitasking too.

On the MeeGo OS used on the Nokia N9, it requires swiping in one direction a couple of times to get to the open tasks screen. You can then press and hold on the screen to allow for closing any app(s) you want and click on the done button after you're finished.

Closing an app requires just swiping from the top to the bottom. IIRC, WebOS required you to swipe upward to get to the task screen and then swipe upward again to close the app.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#106

Post by kopijahe »

k_sze wrote: post #83
TickleSteve wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what the Android One (and previously Android Go) standards where all about, they set minimum hardware standards and experiences. They then guarantee updates for two years, etc...

Guaranteeing updates for X years is an empty promise unless they also guarantee the maximum delay in adopting upstream (security) updates and releasing them, with reimbursement in case of failure to comply.

The first generation of android one's phones (the ones that released in India and Indonesia, powered by mediatek mt6582) have this. They even sometimes have the monthly security update early (for example, the November update is rolled out in late October).

Sadly, the newer generation does not have that. Google given up the update to the vendor, which in turn do what they do best, not updating the goddamn phone.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#107

Post by greenhouse_gas »

devit wrote: post #88
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the device…

What they lacked is support for Android apps, since obviously expecting everyone to rewrite all apps for a new platform is a non-starter. If Mozilla had simply acquired LineageOS, worked on MicroG to reach feature parity with Play Services, added Firefox for Android and their own app store in addition to Google Play via MicroG, and resold flagship Android phones with that as well as offering it to OEMs, they would ha…

1. Companies distributing Google Play Services has to sign an agreement not to ship (or even build) a non-Google Android-derived phone.

So, while Samsung may ship Tizen and Windows Phone, they may not build phones for Amazon (which caused Amazon a lot of problems back in the day - where will you find a company making portable electronics that will make them a white-label product and not making android phones).

2. MicroG depends on Google's servers, so Google can pull the carpet out of them at any time. And where will you get those millions of apps if Google doesn't let you access the App store? Look at the difficulty Amazon has at getting apps into its store, and it's a larger company willing to pay devs to switch apps to Amazon store. And all the hacks that people use will be closed by Google once they get popular.

Now sure, you can use MicroG as a porting library (so if I have a closed source app relying on firebase I can trivially switch to relying on MicroG and Mozilla's back end - kind of like wine), but you'll still have to recreate all of Google's apps anyways (there's no way Google will publish their apps on an Android fork) and also those apps written by those who don't care to port (unlike wine - where I can use the OEM CD or EXE from the OEM website, there's no official way to get apks out of Play Store)

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#108

Post by bitmapbrother »

devit wrote: post #88
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the device…

What they lacked is support for Android apps, since obviously expecting everyone to rewrite all apps for a new platform is a non-starter. If Mozilla had simply acquired LineageOS, worked on MicroG to reach feature parity with Play Services, added Firefox for Android and their own app store in addition to Google Play via MicroG, and resold flagship Android phones with that as well as offering it to OEMs, they would ha…

>If Mozilla had simply acquired LineageOS

Why would they need to acquire LineageOS when they can just fork it for free?

>worked on MicroG to reach feature parity with Play Services

That would have been a TOS violation and would have been instantly shut down by Google.

>their own app store

You can't really compete with the Play store and developers wouldn't bother with it.

>they would have had significant success at very little cost.

No they wouldn't have. It would have reached the same outcome as their Android based FireFox OS did and even faster due to the TOS violations your suggesting.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#109

Post by bitmapbrother »

devit wrote: post #94
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that would still be Android . Which means they'd still be beholden to Google, having to support their code, maintain compatibility with their design decisions, etc. That's not a good place for any serious business to be in.

Because writing a whole OS from scratch competing with giant companies and having to somehow magically go from 0 to a million apps (while being unpopular due to the few apps) is a good place to be in? Instead, they could have gotten all the Android apps and the popularity of Android essentially for free. It's even possible they could have overtaken Google and became the effective steward of the Android platform, sinc…

>Instead, they could have gotten all the Android apps and the popularity of Android essentially for free.

No they wouldn't have. They would not get Google Play Services and your MicroG "solution" is ridiculous from a commercial perspective and a violation from a TOS perspective that would be shut down by Google.

>It's even possible they could have overtaken Google and became the effective steward of the Android platform

I don't think you understand the army of developers it takes to maintain and enhance Android on an annual basis nor the millions of dollars it costs Google. To even suggest that they would have overtaken Google and become the steward of the Android platform is ridiculous.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#110

Post by thescriptkiddie »

beeflaw wrote: post #58
cwyers wrote: post #49

Competing with the Android/iOS duopoly was a war of attrition the Microsoft, Firefox, Canonical and Samsung (Tizen) all lost. If you don't have the resources that those companies do I have a hard time seeing how you survive, and I have no interest in investing in a platform that has an extremely high risk of being orphaned. I wish it was otherwise - earlier today I was lamenting that my Samsung Galaxy S7 is laggier a…

How do you define success? This is not a competitor to iOS/Android, it's for cheap low-end devices, which is still a sizable market. Try running Android on 256MB of RAM...

My first Android phone only had 192 MB of RAM.
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