It seems to offer less than the average Android or iOS? Why should I use it?
If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. It's for people who buy a phone for its low price, who don't care what the OS is.
KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
61–70 of 165 posts
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.
Google is a schizophrenic company. Just watch a few Google I/O tracks, and there is always the future of mobile apps is Android on the Android tracks, while the Chrome/Web tracks are pushing for the future of mobile apps is Web, with an occasional jab at native devs, as if on the room next door they weren't talking about native development. Then to make it even better, now we have Flutter as the third track. While PW…
...or there are just many different ways to solve for the massive variety of problems, and developers with a huge variety of backgrounds, and Google is trying to help them all?
p.s. I am a Googler
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#63Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and archit…
That's not even remotely true. We are seeing significant, growing app development on the "hybrid" stack at Ionic, and strong interest in Progressive Web Apps.
It's like claming that open-space offices are superior because you see them everywhere.
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a good way to not get developers on board. Yes, you can easily develop for iOS/Android and as a result the respective stores are drowned in crap. Merely publishing on there will give you zero visibility. On curated platforms, there's the benefit of being a big fish in a small pond.
This is what Apple did in the beginning, too. I felt as you did about it at the time. Six months later things opened up and the rest is history.
Apple didn't start out with a curated store, they started out with "open" HTML5 apps that couldn't do shit.
Today, Apple barely can do quality control on the iOS store, Google essentially doesn't bother, why should a small shop deal with the issue right off the bat?
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#65I don't know. I really liked Microsoft's phones, but there was no Google Maps, no Google Inbox, and bunch of other apps that I use daily were missing. Software is the problem for these OSes. The only way to be able to compete IMHO is to make it compatible with APKs, installable via a store. Otherwise, it's a nice effort but you'll never reach the adoption necessary to make it worth continuing working on the project.
Remember all those feature phones with a plethora of custom operating systems? Almost none of the users cared (or knew) what the OS was. This is an OS for that kind of device. Nokia is shipping it right now.
The target market might not care or know what the OS is, but they'll want to use software they're used to: Google Maps, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Tinder, Skype, games, etc.
I'm just saying that whatever OS will be useless to a lot of people if it doesn't run what they want it to. One way to do that is to make it compatible with Android apps, which have already a version of virtually every major app.
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#66This is definitely a promising OS. The fact that they have a maps app is extremely important. I think they'll also need a WhatsApp app to be truly competitive. They could use a few other mainstream messaging apps too. The mbasic Facebook messenger should work fine on this OS.
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#67Nice: it looks like the system font — for the Alcatel Go Flip and Nokia 8110 4G at least — is Open Sans. I've been using Source Sans Pro for most things lately, but I did always like Open Sans.
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#68I'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…
Speaking as someone not at all involved in this space, I'd love for Google to take smartphones waaaay more seriously. I feel like in an effort to make Android easy to adopt and customize they have let the "feel" of Android suffer. I hate bloatware on every new phone. I hate that phones differ so greatly. Something invaluable to me on an iPhone is the switch to silence alerts. I wish Google would define a "standard" l…
I think Goog is trying to compete with Apple with quantity and, bear with me, not quality.
Famous quote: "quantity has a quality all its own".
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#69I'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…
Speaking as someone not at all involved in this space, I'd love for Google to take smartphones waaaay more seriously. I feel like in an effort to make Android easy to adopt and customize they have let the "feel" of Android suffer. I hate bloatware on every new phone. I hate that phones differ so greatly. Something invaluable to me on an iPhone is the switch to silence alerts. I wish Google would define a "standard" l…
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...
Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. It is somewhat ironical that the Wintel monopoly that standardized so much of PC space ultimately ended up helping Linux desktops, despite the grumblings of UNIX greybeards.
I don't really agree with the claim. What allowed the Linux desktop to take off was extreme security problems in Windows and generally a terrible user experience. Anyone adopting Linux had to put up with constant hardware incompatibility issues. It's just that Windows was so bad that it was worth it. (I made the switch sometime around 2003, and have been Linux-only for more than a decade.) In contrast, there is no ob…
In addition to security. Linux and BSDs were not as polished usability-wise as Windows NTs before early 2000s.
Just my humble opinion.