Firefox OS phone launches Tuesday in Spain at $3 a month | Hacker News Reader

Firefox OS phone launches Tuesday in Spain at $3 a month

news.cnet.com

57 pointsjanjongboom26 comments

Given the atmosphere with the PRISM fall out, I would imagine Firefox's OS would be welcomed by the public and promoted by privacy advocates.

I'm really excited about Firefox's mobile OS. I was really hoping that the Ubuntu's Mobile OS was going to pick up steam, but it looks like that may not come to fruition.

> I would imagine Firefox's OS would be welcomed by the > public and promoted by privacy advocates.

You can have the same level of privacy on the other platforms. Just turn airplane mode on. My point is, it is not about OS, it's about services. Unless Mozilla offer their own GSM, Search, cloud, whatever, it does not matter.

Try using Android without a google account.. Just having the option not to be logged in to google 24 hours a day would be a big win.

I've had more than my share of Android devices, going all the way back to the G1. It's always been trivial to bypass the Google account login, should you want to (I even did that for a while on a spare phone that I was lazy about sending back for warranty service). As another commenter notes, getting third-party apps may be more complicated, but there are several options (Amazon, AndroidPIT, GetJar and other stores, including regional/local ones.

Aaaah...good ol' G1, that was my first smartphone too, then I had to get an iPhone for coding. Nothing like typing out code on a pocket keyboard.

I think Apple is very similar with requiring an account to activate the phone's functionality. If I remember correctly, the 1st gen needed to be synced with iTunes (directly to a computer) and the latest iOS devices require an Apple ID.

I haven't had an opportunity to try a Firefox phone yet, but I'm really hoping that it doesn't require some cloud based account to function. Just having all my data in one collective resource bothers me.

I've never used a Google account with mine (Nexus One, Cyanogenmod 7), and I get along just fine. The main trouble is in getting new apps, but I only use 3 that didn't come with the OS anyway, and those were all easy enough to find the APKs for.

The dynamic app search , which lets you runs apps on the cloud without needing to install them is an interesting feature.

I heard about something similar for android which runs apps in the cloud , anybody knows how it's called?

AFAIK they're using everything.me, which does also have an Android version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.everything....

Thanks, thats the one. It seems very similar to what mozilla talks about :dynamically running mobile sites.

Edit: it appears that everything.me is invested by mozilla, and probably is the dynamic apps feature.

I think you might be talking about http://www.appsurfer.com/

Folks, If you have a developer's version, will you be able to migrate away and flash a public version of the OS on the developer phone?

Already does. These phones run the same software version as the stable version of GeeksPhone developer preview phones.

Ah great, then I can still try and pick up the GeeksPhone hardware -- Thanks :)

I have the low-end geeksphone with Firefox OS. Even thought it is an alpha but I think it is really too light for a smartphone. UI isnt that responsive and it freezes quite often. This should be better with mid-end phones in my opinion. But than again, awesome price for a smart phone.

I bought this phone a year and a half ago with pretty identical specs, for the same price:

http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_u8650_sonic-4205.php

That leads me to believe the phone itself is actually cheaper than that now(in mid-2013), but they preferred to make it more expensive and give credit instead. Still it seems good value with the credit.

I wonder if it really works better than Android at that level. Google is also rumored to make Android 5.0 a lot more optimized for such phones.

I bought a ZTE Blade roughly 3 years ago running Android 2.1, which seems to be a spiritual ancestor to this device. I actually paid about the same as this device (including the free credit) but I think most people paid 70-100 euro. See a spec comparison here:

http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=3391&idPhone2=...

It was the device that (due to it's price/performance ratio) convinced me there was something to this Android thing.

I'm just glad Mozilla have a reason to focus on the performance of my favourite Android browser, that Google/Apple have a reason to better support modern web standards and that websites can hopefully stop foisting terrible apps on to me and just let me browse.

> Google is also rumored to make Android 5.0 a lot more optimized for such phones.

Sorry to be thread-jacking, but I've yet to see/hear any solid and seemingly reliable Android 5-related news or leaks. Got any sources for that claim?

June 12th (VR-Zone exclusive):

> "Our sources left us with some more info regarding the OS. Android 5.0 will be an optimized OS and will run well even on devices with 512 MB of RAM"

http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusiveandroid-5-0-to-come-in-...

June 28th (WSJ exclusive):

> "According to Google, the majority of Android devices currently being used rely on a version of the software released in 2011 that has fewer capabilities than newer releases. Some industry experts say that the most recent versions of Android are better for higher-end devices than lower-end or older ones that had, for instance, 512 megabytes of memory.

> The coming version of Android is supposed to remedy the issue, said people familiar with the matter, and also help mobile app developers focus on optimizing their apps for fewer versions of the software."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732368920457857...

Some Google devs at I/O also said a future version of Android will be more optimized for low-end devices. But regardless of how well they optimize it, I think the optimization of apps for such low-end phones is just as big of a problem, and should be a priority, too. Google admitted to this at I/O (that apps are becoming too heavy), but I haven't seen them do much about it. In fact, with the new Hangouts and the new Play Store app they've made it worse.

On phones like the one above, those 2 apps are even slower for me than the previous versions. Firefox might get around this (at least for now) because their HTML5 "apps" will be a lot simpler/lighter, without a lot of elements. The thing pulling back on performance will be Javascript, though, so we'll see if the "lightness" of FF OS' apps beats the slowness of Javascript.

" older ones that had, for instance, 512 megabytes of memory"

You wish :) , the best-selling Android phones here in Uruguay are the:

Samsung Galaxy Mini (384 mb of RAM and and incredibly crappy 180 mb of internal memory)

Samsung Galaxy Ace (278 mb of available RAM and 158 mb of internal memory, I own one and I'm growing to hate it)

ZTE Movistar One (512 mb of RAM)

Huawei u8652 (256 mb RAM)

If Firefox OS has better responsiveness (and especially if it enables better use of the SD cards instead of internal memory), I'll be eagerly awaiting a release for those phones.

Have you tried running for example Cyanogenmod on your Galaxy Ace?

It is my impression that both the Galaxy Mini and Ace have a big and active developer community.

On my girlfriends Galaxy Mini it made a huge difference in both responsiveness and stability. (Running Cyanogenmod7 Stable based on Gingerbread.)

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Cooper_Info http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Tass_Info

I rooted my girlfriend's Mini :) , and one of my coworkers has the Cyanogenmod on the Ace.

It does improve a lot of things (for example enables Flash support on the Ace), but it's still a bit annoying.

Yeah, there's a lot of support, but it's still a bit scary. I didn't back up the original firmware on the Mini and I had to scramble to get something similar when it didn't work.

Hopefully I'll buy a better one soon (my GF now has the Mini 2 and it's a HUGE improvement, guess I'll go for the Ace 2)

I hope for that. It means that they could support my nexus S again.

Stock Android 4.1 works quite well on the Nexus S. If it doesn't for you, you might want to try a factory reset.

I run stock 4.1 until last week, when CM 10.1 went stable. When I say support, I mean continue to get the later versions (nexus s stopped at JB 4.1) .

I'd buy one of these. Especially if I can debrand it easily.

Any news when they're coming to the UK?

Nope. So far Latin America (Telefonica), Poland (Deutsche Telekom), Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro (all Telenor) have been confirmed for a launch this year.

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