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Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

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Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#101

Post by milankragujevic »

leeoniya wrote: post #97
rhelmer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla can't provide base images without licensing proprietary software (for the RIL primarily, although there may be others depending on the hardware). Also the focus for Mozilla right now is on providing new low-end hardware and optimizing for that. It's possible to build and flash onto your own hardware, people on the XDA forums have done it. Testing web apps in the simulator (or just with the responsive design t…

> Mozilla can't provide base images without licensing proprietary software (for the RIL primarily, although there may be others depending on the hardware). how do the AOSP/CM11 devs do it?

For my device, they would just distribute the blobs of all drivers that they don't have the source to.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#102

Post by milankragujevic »

I actually dislike Firefox OS, not because of the lack of apps or the architecture (code a new launcher in hours, without having to learn Java), but simply it was horrendously slow.

I had the Geeksphone Keon, as part of the Firefox OS challange from my local mobile carrier, Telenor.

I'm ignoring the battery, since this was a developer phone, but it shipped with a corrupted OS that didn't show any icons and I had to upgrade it to the latest version (stable, I might add), and then apps would close, it was really laggy, camera rarely worked, the music player also rarely worked properly, and the whole phone just reeked of unfinished software...

The phone has long since died (corrupted itself beyond repair), and I'm unsure how the new Firefox OS works (the simulator doesn't simulate the device itself, so it's not a good way to test the OS) but if it's the same... Nope.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#103

Post by pjmlp »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #89
themechanic wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the 3rd world lives with dumb phones that work well for the tasks they are designed to perform which are to make calls and send text messages. The device in question is not able to perform any of the above named tasks without running into problems. This would frustrate anyone no matter where they live

If the 'problems' are lag and failure to multitask (as listed) then they are only problems of patience, as I mentioned. This does not frustrate anyone; it frustrates folks who feel entitled to the best.

Except a 5 year old Symbian phone is capable of multitask without any issues.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#104

Post by jeena »

bobajeff wrote: post #83
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…

From that little snippet I'd say it doesn't sound like Firefox OS was tested very well on the hardware before this phone was released. Which is a real shame since one of the main differentiators I've been reading about is how much better it run on low-end devices than android. If I were Mozilla I'd think about finding another selling point. Maybe they should rethink the product. I remember when they were first talkin…

Oh how I hate the fact that while I was buying my Alcatel One Touch Fire in Poland last year I was already reading about FxOS 1.3 in the making, now I read about 2.1, but ...

When I bought it 1.0.1 was installed, half a year later when they bumped it to 1.1.1 then I was really hopefull to get 1.2 but Alcatel and the polish Telekom wouldn't release it because they said the quality is not good enough, but they are working together with Mozilla on releasing 1.3.

I've been waiting ever since, no sign of any update. I asked in the #b2g IRC channel what is up with that and nobody would tell me anything.

I have an app in their marketplace https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/ it was even featured for a couple of weeks, and even though I could upgrade manually I need to stay on 1.1.1 because all the users of the app are still on 1.1.1, think of all the wasted(?) work everybody is doing which will (probably) never reach the users unless they buy a new devise.

I really like the idea behind Firefox OS, but I am really disappointed how it is turning out, and I have no plans to buy a new FxOS phone any time soon, at least not before this particular thing has been fixed.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#105

Post by thegeomaster »

milankragujevic wrote: post #100
thegeomaster wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't wait to see what local developers in developing countries create to improve the lives of people within their communities and societies. I can't resist the urge to plug my project here. It failed as a Show HN, but now it's very relevant: https://github.com/geomaster/beoprevoz . In short, it's a neat public transport FxOS app, specific to Belgrade, Serbia (but in theory and by design pluggable and easy to gene…

Hey geomaster! Long time no see... You probably know who I am... That's a great app, mine (Wi-Fi password search) failed since Mozilla didn't want to approve it due to it sending location data to the server, so in the end it never even had the chance to enter the Telenor competition. Congrats on the app and the prizes.

I never imagined I'd run into you here, in all of places! Thanks for all the kind words and, having experienced something of a sort before, I really feel sorry for your situation with the app. I have skimmed through your websites and I see you have greatly improved in a multitude of aspects since I last saw any word from you. Keep striving for greatness, and if you wanna talk, drop me a line (email is in my profile) :)

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#106

Post by justincormack »

gambiting wrote: post #55
jonknee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Everyone I know just buys phones outright and is on giffgaff at around £12 a month... Different demographics I guess.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#107

Post by CmonDev »

mikemajzoub wrote: post #38

I am SO excited about the possibilities Firefox OS provides. I do realize it's in early stages now, and there are many hurdles for the Mozilla team to overcome for it to become a real player in the market, but I'm crossing my fingers. Specifically, I can't wait to see what local developers in developing countries create to improve the lives of people within their communities and societies. With the barrier to entry l…

Unfortunately it is part of their push to lock down the web. Lock it down to legacy languages - JavaScript and HTML. Transpilation is of course not an answer, because it is not nearly same development experience. I hope mainstream platform providers and democratic solution providers such as Xamarin will keep on their good work in letting us use the languages we love, be it Scala, F#, C# on any other as beautiful.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#108

Post by CmonDev »

pjmlp wrote: post #28

In developing countries you can get feature phones that are more powerful, offer real native apps, a web browser and cost a similar price. In other countries, Android and Windows Phone devices are already in the 100€ range. Specially if one is not looking to buy the very latest models. Personally, I think it would be better to focus resources elsewhere.

That is thousands of proper native apps, that are available today.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#109

Post by nimrody »

gambiting wrote: post #55
jonknee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

What do you do when you want to break the contract? I.e., after 6 months you decide to switch carrier? Now what?

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#110

Post by gambiting »

nimrody wrote: post #109
gambiting wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

What do you do when you want to break the contract? I.e., after 6 months you decide to switch carrier? Now what?

On O2 you just pay off the phone, and then break the contract whenever you want. There is no early termination fee.
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