Geeksphone's Firefox OS smartphones go on sale tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

Geeksphone's Firefox OS smartphones go on sale tomorrow

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203 pointsJhsto96 comments

I'm pretty excited about Firefox OS, honestly. While I loved my first two Android phones (G1 dev phone, and Nexus One), I've hated my third (HTC Sensation). I can blame HTC Sense for some of the disappointment, but I think Android has become less stable over time. It restarts the desktop (dashboard, or whatever the "main" screen is called) regularly, maps crashes all the time, and sometimes the network just stops without warning or error. I've occasionally rebooted the phone to find I've missed hours worth of calls and text messages and Google Talk messages.

I'm also becoming frustrated with Google's evolution toward walled gardens, an end to privacy, and away from the open (and anonymous, when needed) web. Reader to Google+ is one indicator. CISPA is another. I consider Firefox a good foil against that evolution, and I've started switching back to Firefox for my primary browser. In time, Google will have less control over my online life, because the trust I once had toward Google is fading.

I don't believe Google really believes in "Don't Be Evil", anymore, and so I have to protect myself, and push back against Google's dominance. However small my efforts may be to GOOG's bottom line. (And I still hold GOOG stock. Ethically, I'm not sure where I stand on that.)

I can't speak for your experiences with the HTC Sensation, but my Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.1.1 has been remarkably stable, especially compared to my previous phone, an HTC Legend running Android 2.2.

As for broader issues you raise about openness vs. the walled garden, I'm also excited to see alternatives like Firefox OS, Ubuntu Phone and so on take shape.

I have a Note II running 4.1.1 and I experience the OP's "deluge of texts/notifications hours after the fact" issue. It's very frustrating to get pinged with 10+ notifications at once that came in over the past hours.

To be fair, it's wifi related, but to be more fair: every single iOS device gets texts and notifications from the identically same wifi network without any issue.

If it's anything like my work network, it's because you have ports blocked. Agreed that it's annoying that iOS has no such problems, but I'm guessing we have a minority problem.

Indeed, with my SGS3 I feel like it's about the best phone I'm going to need for a while. I'm pretty happy to say that I'm totally satisfied with this phone and I think I will be for quite a while.

Seriously, it's so fast, so stable, and has all the things I want (solid camera, fast Web browsing, day long battery, etc) that I doubt I'll want anything else for maybe years.

I'd say you can and should blame HTC Sense, in the absence of current experience with Android. I have a Sensation as well, and also a G1, Nexus One, and of late a Galaxy Nexus. I also use a Motorola Defy and Optimus G with stock Android and a Nexus 7 tablet with the same (though different versions). The only devices I've ever had consistent problems with are those with carrier crapware (there was another before the Sensation but I can't recall what it was at the moment).

How could like the G1? The capacitive screen was awful and the performance terrible, although the latter was due to lack of optimizations and JIT in the Android VM.

Now that Sundar Pichai is in charge of Android I've been looking at alternatives and Firefox OS looks very promising. I don't use that many apps on my phone anyway and would like to steer clear of some Google products.

>Now that Sundar Pichai is in charge of Android I've been looking at alternatives

Why does Pichai make you want to look at alternatives? just curious.

He's the fella who shutdown the Atlanta engineering office and killed the projects that were being developed there. Not a big fan.

Edit: He's also responsible for the CalDav fiasco.

It was a great little phone. I actually owned two of them (not because of breakage...a friend got a dev phone from Google for free and gave it to me, so I gave the original G1 I'd bought to a friend). I loved the keyboard, and miss it pretty regularly with touchscreen-only phones. Maybe that's why I didn't mind the touchscreen...a keyboard is better.

Funnily enough, the dev phone (the second G1 I owned) is still in use today. I gave it to a friend a few years ago when I got the Nexus One, and she is still using it and still loving it. She had never had a smart phone. When her phone died, I gave her the dev phone, because I was tired or her calling rather than texting (and because I'm nice like that). It's taken a lot of abuse, but it's still ticking, and is more reliable than the Nexus One I replaced it with (which died), and the Sensation 4G (which has several hardware problems, in addition to the software being more than a little quirky). I'm still really impressed by that old phone.

The last version of Android you used was 2.3 -- I don't think it's fair to compare that to anything current.

How do you figure the last version I used was 2.3? The Sensation I currently own has 4.0.

And, I actually really liked the Nexus and the G1. I hate my ICS-equipped current Android phone. The older versions of Android were great; it's the newer version that has disappointed me.

The newer version as fugged up by the vendor's extensions, you mean. I'm currently using the Nexus 4 - a proper successor to and much fairer comparison to the other vanilla Android devices you've had - and have experienced no problems with Android 4.2.

Got a Galaxy Nexus here, makes me wonder why people buy iPhones -- truly amazing device, am sorted for awhile here, zero need to get the latest & greatest from Google just yet (although $350 with Gorilla Glass is a pretty absurd deal).

What's the iPhone running these days factory unlocked? Gotta be at least $650 USD, no? I don't understand.

I went from a G1 through two non-google phones, and hated them both.. really like my Nexus 4 that I have now. I'm also frustrated with Google's actions as of late... and if they had an even higher end phone that the Peak, would probably order one.

I have two Geeksphone Keons in here and I've been speaking at events about Firefox OS. I develop mobile apps and web for both Android and iOS and I find that developing for Firefox OS is very refreshing. The OS gets out of your way and you're free to create your own vision for an app.

You're not restricted to a walled garden and don't need to use the Firefox Marketplace if you don't want to. Your app can be on the device or hosted on your server and have an offline mode using appCache.

For those that want to know more, take a look at the developer hub at:

https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/

All you need to develop is a copy of Firefox with the the Firefox OS Simulador add-on installed. The rest is just HTML/CSS/JS. The hardware is exposed using the webAPI which can be seen at https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI.

:-D

PS: I am a Mozilla Rep.

Wow, this sounds like much less cruft compared to iOS or Android development.

Translation: "No mammoth Java/Eclipse requirements". Hail!

I have two Geeksphone Keons in here

And how are they? Are they stable enough for everyday use? Are they nice to use?

they are very good to use and surprising enough given the price and low specs.

not all apis are implemented yet so I would not recommend using it as your primary phone just yet. I use mine as primary phone during weekends and am happy. It still needs polish, bugfixes and more apps but developing for it is pretty fun and I like the architecture

Can I buy a Geeksphone Keon and just use it on wifi or do I need a cell provider? I am thinking of getting one just to do some development.

+1 on this question... would be nice to be able to use things like this with a SIP client over wifi instead of or in addition to mobile.

Another question that is somewhat unclear is in the US will I get 3G/4G data on what carriers? Would prefer to keep my T-Mobile MVNO over AT&T.

these phones are unlocked so they work with any carrier. One of my keons is only on wifi and has no simcard, it works fine.

currently I am not aware of a SIP client for the system.

Thanks for the answer

You're welcome! If you need any more information about Firefox OS check out the developer hub at:

https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/

:-)

This highlights the different strategy Firefox OS is taking- completely sidestepping North America and Europe, and putting out cheap devices in emerging markets.

We'll see if it works out, but it seems like a very clever strategy to me. There is no way Mozilla is going to outcompete Apple and Google in marketing, but there are many people out there in world still using dumbphones that could upgrade when given the right opportunity.

I would be interested in a smartphone that doesn't require a Google account (or an Apple account) to function.

Get an Android phone and don't sign into your Google account (and flash a ROM that has it all removed, if you'd like). There are APKs available of non-Play Store stores that should let you find alternate map apps, etc..

I've done that, but I'd still like to get a few apps from the official Play store, and I haven't found any other way to download and install them.

I've found http://f-droid.org/ to be an increasingly viable alternative Android app store. All open source so obviously the choice is comparatively smaller, but it seems to have pretty much everything I need.

I have never signed in to any google account on my Galaxy Nexus. It works OK but I don't really install apps - it's too much of a hassle to track down the APKs.

I know it's not the answer you're looking for, but a Windows Phone fits your description. (and it's quite good)

... doesn't Windows Phone require a Windows Live account for most functionality? Not specified by GP, but almost certainly equally undesirable.

Yes, hence my "not the answer you're looking for" :)

now, explain the "Quite Good" part.

The Windows Phone ones are out there. ;)

Now, I get your point, but there are too many useful scenarios where having an online ID helps (and too many benefits for providers if you have an ID too) that I don't think this is very feasible.

Last time I tried (HTC 8S) you needed an outlook account to mass transfer contacts from one phone to another (bluetooth was limited, vcf not allowed). Background syncing and 'cloud' features were aggressively pushed on users. Microsoft is no different from Google.

The WP mention was a joke.

I do agree that the account thing is pushed too much in many cases.

My point was that having an ID has too many advantages to both the phone user and the OS company (not that those two sets of advantages have a bigger intersection...) that it's hard to see their presence/usage in smart phones not happening.

I think most interesting will be in countries like Argentina (where I live). The government here has put obscene tariffs on imports, especially in technology. The government does this in an attempt to promote growth in local manufacturing and technology companies (albeit an attempt which only hinders the purchasing power of their people and growth of their economy in the long run.)

For example, iPhone's are not available here through the normal market. If you want an iPhone you would have to purchase one through MercadoLibre (Latin America's Ebay). An iPhone which costs you $600 in the states or Canada would cost you nearly double here. Even Android devices are generally extremely overpriced.

This combined with BBM and terrible messaging packages are the reasons why BlackBerry does so well here. Nearly everyone owns a BB here.

If Firefox can offer a reasonably priced phone which can offer an app ecosystem and (data driven) messaging service, I think they stand to win significantly - at least in Argentina.

This seems orthogonal to FxOS vs. Android, though. If somebody figures out how to ship cheap phones in broken economies, why not ship phones that can run apps?

Geeksphone is a Spanish company. I agree there is potential in emerging markets for Firefox OS but they aren't sidestepping Europe.

But Geeksphone isn't part of the official Mozilla strategy; Geeksphone is doing this entirely of their own accord. None of the countries that are part of Mozilla's official launch are in Western Europe.

almost feels like a mercy blow on nokia.

I'm really excited to see this get to market. The number of developers who already know enough JavaScript to get something done is large. And Mozilla is interested in advancing the open web, not building a closed ecosystem.

I hope there are plans for FFOS tablets in the future. At ~$200 for a decent tablet, they're cheap enough that you can start using them as single purpose devices. The kitchen grocery list. Outside of every meeting room, showing the room calendar. By the door to tell you whether or not to bring an umbrella and which bus to catch. On the wall, as artwork. Basically, any place you might previously have hung a sign. Having them be hackable by any webmonkey would be perfect.

> And Mozilla is interested in advancing the open web, not building a closed ecosystem.

This is definitely the problem with Chrome browser - I've seen a lot of enhancements to that product that seem of very little use for a browser sitting on a functional mobile/desktop OS but critical if it happens to be the only native app (ie, ChromeOS).

Meanwhile, FF quietly just works for all of my needs and has gotten a lot better in the past several releases.

At ~$200 for a decent tablet, they're cheap enough that you can start using them as single purpose devices. The kitchen grocery list. Outside of every meeting room, showing the room calendar.

Did you see the Kindle Weather Display? It's basically that, just in monochrome, and a Kindle is $69.

http://imgur.com/a/17Y89

Between Firefox OS devices and Jolla (http://jolla.com/) Sailfish OS ones, the next months will be pretty interesting.

Can't wait to play with both of them.

It would be even more awesome if they strongly cooperated somehow, though.

This weekend I was at a Firefox OS workshop in Madrid. They gave me a Phone for free to play/hack with. I think they will have a big chance. The phones are very good for the price and Firefox OS works alright. They have to fix a lot of bugs but they are on the right track.

And it is so easy to make apps, to put them on your phone or market.

Where did you find out about that event? I'd be interested to attend a future event.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/03/firefox-os-app-workshops/

I'll be attending the upcoming workshop in Bogotá. Looking forward :)

Did they give you one of the geeksphones or something else?

Well, I won one in the last FirefoxOS App Day (or whatever it was called) and I still haven't received mine.

Sad, because the product I ported to it sank to the depths.

I hope this goes well. I got excited about using web technologies to build native mobile applications with WebOS, but am happier to see the non-profit Mozilla take charge on it.

I also agree with other commenters that it's a great idea for them to attack the emerging markets rather than compete with the huge players in the US and Europe. Excited to see that revolution.

I've always supported Mozilla's mission, but I'm still a Chrome user because I feel like it's a more polished consumer product, particular in the area of design. Every time I get that F the establishment motivation and open Firefox, I look at the tab structure and the separate url and search bars and close it again. Sad face.

In case you wonder, the reason for which Firefox doesn't merge url and search bar is to protect user's privacy. If you prefer a Chrome-style UI, there are a couple of add-ons that provide just that.

I hadn't heard that it was a privacy issue. I'll have to check out those addons, thanks!

There's an add-on that merges the address and search bars: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foobar/

> I've always supported Mozilla's mission, but I'm still a Chrome user because I feel like it's a more polished consumer product

If you're not using Firefox, how are you "supporting" Mozilla's mission?

As an ignorant American who knows zip about smartphones (still carrying around an ancient dumbphone, desperate for an upgrade) what would it take to actually receive calls on one of these? Do Verizon et al just let you waltz into a store with a phone and buy cell service?

Verizon or Sprint, no. T-Mobile, yes. AT&T can technically sell you a SIM card but the people in the store probably do not know how.

Sprint is one of their announced partners, that surprises me.

Sprint uses SIM cards for LTE, but more importantly, you can mix and match platforms and cellular technologies. Remember when Android added CDMA support to launch on Verizon? I'm sure the Firefox team would love to be supported by as many carriers as possible.

>Sprint uses SIM cards for LTE

Well, yes and no. Their LTE implementation uses SIM cards, but their devices don't have a physical SIM slot and instead just have an internal chip that isn't user-accessible. The only exception to this that I'm aware of is the iPhone 5.

CDMA support is being worked on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=726098

I have just showed up at the local AT&T store and asked for a prepaid SIM. Walked out 10 minutes later with a re-fillable month-to-month account that I used for testing.

Did that too. Funny thing, I was visiting US, had no address here, but the AT&T guy seem to like the idea to use my hotel's address. 10mins later, I was calling at local rates, not using my crazy european roaming fees. Very good service, even tho I was in a rural area.

So yes, they know and willing to sell you the SIM cards under very uncommon conditions. PS. just occured to me that in US you don't have ID cards, but you use the driving license for ID. So it's very relative where you live and what's your name. Correct me if I'm wrong ( that was in 2009 ).

Verizon would not. For AT&T and T-Mobile (as well as MVNOs based on those two such as StraightTalk, SimpleMobile), you can waltz in (or go to the website) and get just a SIM card to pop into the phone of your choice. When it comes to data service, there can be frequency differences that could result in some phones having to fall back to 2G service instead of 3G or 4G, such as my wife's iPhone 3GS on T-Mobile.

115 euros off contract, including VAT? Not bad.. can't find details on sd card support though.

According to Geeksphone's own website (http://www.geeksphone.com/) it does have a microSD card slot.

yep, it does have one

KEON: ------- CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 7225AB 1Ghz. UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA). GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE). Screen 3.5" HVGA Multitouch. Camera 3 MP. 4 GB (ROM) and 512 MB (RAM). MicroSD, Wifi N, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, Radio FM, Light & Prox. Sensor, G-Sensor, GPS, MicroUSB. Battery 1580 mAh.

PEAK: ------- CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 8225 1.2Ghz x2. UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA). GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE). Screen 4.3" qHD IPS Multitouch. Camera 8 MP (back) + 2 MP (front). 4 GB (ROM) and 512 MB (RAM). MicroSD, Wifi N, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, Radio FM, Light & Prox. Sensor, G-Sensor, GPS, MicroUSB, Flash (camera). Battery 1800 mAh.

Qualcomm, that means no datasheet. Too bad, it certainly looks interesting for the price.

The first thing I thought when I looked at this was that with CyanogenMod this could be a great secondary phone I could use to keep track of Android accessibility as well as learn android programming. Then I looked at the Android 4.2 hardware requirements and it looks like it won't have enough ram to provide a good experience. I won't get one of these until Firefox OS has enough accessibility for blind users to be used on a daily basis.

We have accessibility coming for Firefox OS. It still need some work, but I've seen text to speech working really well last week on a target device (with 256MB of RAM).

I'd be interested in alpha/beta testing, if I can be of help let me know how I can contact you.

You can mail me: fabrice [at] mozilla.com

Hardware isn't very thrilling. Even the better spec'd peak is qHD vs. current Android flagships' 1080P screen resolution, a processor generation back, 4GB ROM vs. 32GB and 64GB internal memory, no LTE. The Keon model is a step further back yet.

That does let them offer a very affordable price at least, and probably meant much cheaper to get an ODM since there isn't anything new about the hardware. LTE isn't as important outside US and with fewer contract subsidies the price is more important. They might manage some low end sales this way and get some developers to pickup an extra developer device.

I think the bigger OEMs avoid this sort of thing because there isn't much profit margin, but it might be enough for a small company to get by. You can't really get huge sales unless you are in stores, but you can get some.

It seems to me that this release is about getting phones into the hands of developers, not normal consumers.

The FireFox OS project is aiming for the dumbphone/featurephone market.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QnIskIc3EY

"...but will there be buyers?" Yes. I'm definitely buying a Peak and a Keon. =)

Yes I want one too. The only hitch is dealing with the actual providers in the US, my current contract, and how much they want me on a plan that rips me off. But I'd imagine this will be a moderate hit with developers who end up making apps, which ends up selling more phones. I've never liked the Android or iPhone development environments.

Any details about shipping costs? And will non-EU countries also have to pay the VAT fee? (Hosting companies do not charge VAT for non-EU customers.) 91 euros seems to be too tempting. :)

You pay VAT only if you are from EU. Exports do not carry VAT, but you pay customs fee.

Boy, I better get hopping on my FF OS app. :D

What are other developers doing and or using to create innovative streaming audio/video web apps for Firefox OS?

We have a flash fallback for streaming for Firefox desktop, but we havent had a chance to look at Firefox OS.

Firefox OS supports h264, so could you not just use <video> tags?

And Firefox for Windows supports it too since version 20.

Thanks you guys for the tip!

Can the h264 codec be used to stream audio, specifically MP3s?

I was partially wrong. It's need to enable media.windows-media-foundation.enabled setting in about:config, so it's still don't suitable for real use. MP3 in audio tag would work.

In theory, you could use WebRTC to stream data from phone to phone as P2P connections.

I've also been toying around with a Spotify streamer, which uses websockets to stream data from open.spotify.com to client side using binary websockets. I managed to create it natively without using any client side JS libaries, so as soon as binary websockets will be supported on phones, I'll be able to stream music to my phone. The music is playable trough HTML5 music player and currently works on mobiles with a workaround, where the music is first piped to a file and then referenced in DOM. Sadly, the hosting service took my servers down because of DMCA and for the same reason I've kept the source code private.

It is written in node.js

WebRTC is not in gecko 18 which is the version Firefox OS will initially ship with (ffos versions 1.0.1 and 1.1). WebRTC support should make it into firefox os when we pull from mozilla central again to branch off version 1.2, but development won't be getting started on 1.2 until later in the summer.

Based on these specs I guess my good old Galaxy Nexus should have no problem running FirefoxOS? I'm really hoping it'll be ported to existing devices too.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/... Galaxy Nexus is specified as a Tier 3 device. :)

This is exciting news. I'll probably end up with one of these as well as a Jolla (the Sailfish phone) in the near future.

Slightly related: does anyone know when the first Ubuntu phone is being released (specifically, in the US)?

"Ubuntu will be ready for smartphones at retail in Q4 2013." http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/contact-us

It'll be interesting to see it go head-to-head with Android. I think it has potential simply because of how popular Ubuntu is, whereas Google has yet to release a proper desktop operating system.

Phones are now available. I just ordered a peak.

Why is there so much boast over this fellas age? Didn't this just happen...

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