Hacker News Reader

Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Simple.

1. Most people don't need or want complexity like what you see from the typical low cost Android devices. Remember most of these people are still upgrading from Nokia style feature phones and aren't after a computer in your pocket (just yet).

2. Android in particular is really nasty at the low end. The quality of experience you would get from a tightly optimised and simplified Firefox OS would be immeasurably better. Again. You don't need to have X, Y and Z instead just have X implemented really, really well.

3. The barrier to entry and cost for developing HTML/JS apps is far lower than Java and Objective-C. You really do need a decent PC/Mac to program for either. And we all agree that custom, locally developed apps is vital.

View on HN

> 2. Android in particular is really nasty at the low end. The quality of experience you would get from a tightly optimised and simplified Firefox OS would be immeasurably better.

Firefox OS is worse here, not better. Gingerbread runs far better on low end hardware than Firefox OS does. The later Android stuff is more demanding (particularly in RAM), but the performance target (60fps everywhere, low latency) is also much, much higher than what Firefox OS is capable of achieving.

Firefox OS is less efficient than iOS, Android, or WP. By a lot.

Numbers?

Go look at any hands on video or flash it yourself on a device that runs Android. It's clear as day that Firefox OS is far from fast and responsive on hardware that Android doesn't have issues with. And this makes a ton of logical sense, as it would be a goddamn miracle if Mozilla managed to make web technologies an order of magnitude faster and more memory efficient than anyone else.

Or hell, just run Firefox on your existing Android device - that's all Firefox OS is in reality. Mozilla makes a bunch of claims about how it's "closer to the metal" or some such nonsense, but it isn't. It's not like Android runs all native code in a VM - it's as "close to the metal" as you can get, with the exception that system calls go to the kernel. Just as they do in Firefox OS. Particularly since Firefox OS is built on top of Android.

> Particularly since Firefox OS is built on top of Android

Source? I don't think this is the case

According to Moz's website:

The lower-level "operating system" of b2g. Gonk consists of a linux kernel and userspace hardware abstraction layer (HAL). The kernel and several userspace libraries are common open-source projects: linux, libusb, bluez, etc. Some other parts of the HAL are shared with the android project: GPS, camera, among others. You could say that Gonk is an extremely simple linux distribution.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Architecture

> It's not like Android runs all native code in a VM - it's as "close to the metal" as you can get

Can you please explain how Dalvik[1] isn't a VM? Sorry if I am missing your point.

Are you referring to the NDK[2]? I haven't used it but my understanding was that Dalvik is still used for UI and basic process control, while calling out to native code via JNI.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_%28software%29

[2] - http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

I was referring to the NDK. The NDK is perfectly capable of input & drawing - it's what many games use, for example. It's also what Firefox uses. Well, Firefox is a hybrid - a mix of Java and native. But the web parts are all native running outside of dalvik and drawing directly to a surface via OpenGL.

great points. I've been a big fan and advocate of android for some time. But I've have been disappointed and still am disappointed by how much hardware is necessary to run even basic tasks like getting onto the Internet and reading a static page, how even scrolling through the basic launcher interface stutters, even on the new nexus 7, how switching between apps can take so much time.

it seems that Android as a solution to the problem of a mobile phone is overshooting a big chunk of the market. in that sense I think FxOS is in a good position to disrupt the mobile space.

now how can I get my hands on a phone??

Seriously the only people who think Android is great for low end devices are those that have never used it. I've built a number of apps that needed to support those devices and it was a nightmare. And it's not just pure specs everyone involved thinks of the people using them as cheap and therefore less deserving of a polished experience.

Breaking free from all of that and getting back to simple, well executed basics is the way to go IMHO.

1. So you limit complexity by limiting them to running everything inside of Firefox. Mozilla knows what best. Deny them access to fast native apps on entry level hardware. Sounds like the GNOME 3 philosophy.

2. I have the original Galaxy S and it runs CM 10 Jellybean like butter. Sure bloated skins like touchwiz can slow down phones, but there's nothing wrong with AOSP on similarity spec'd hardware.

3. So you're saying people who can't afford a low-end PCs will be developing web apps with their $79 FF OS phone/tablet? LOL. I can hardly wait for this new paradigm in mobile development.

I also wonder about the wisdom of taking low-end hardware, where every bit of efficiency at the software level matters, and shackling it by not allowing third-party native code.

All of the early early reviews are confirming our suspicions. For example this one from the verge: "Lag is a major concern — apps took multiple seconds to load, to change toggles, and to make UI transitions"[1] Or this one from CNET: "unresponsive screen makes typing a laborious process requiring painstaking precision. Every action from swiping to tapping onscreen controls takes a beat until you see results, so using the phone for a prolonged period steals minutes of your time... Lag carries into the camera, which is slow to launch, snap, and reset."[2]

This is why I'm looking forward to the Edge w/ its Ubuntu OS. It doesn't try to hide its Android heritage, even gives you the option to boot to AOSP. Also has a modern gesture based UI unlike Firefox's dated iOS rip off. And most importantly, on resource limited mobile device gives developers the option to write native apps.

[1]http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/24/4024530/ztes-open-is-the-f....

[2]http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645....

yeah, 256MB of RAM is just not enough. The CPU speed is not relevant when you have so little memory to work with. I guess it's an OK deal for $79, but it's not going to do a good job running javascript apps with so little RAM. Even if it is only running one at a time. My GMail tab alone is using 237MB right now and every tab in my browser is > 50MB. That 256MB also has to hold the OS code.

> Deny them access to fast native apps on entry level hardware.

> I also wonder about the wisdom of taking low-end hardware, where every bit of efficiency at the software level matters, and shackling it by not allowing third-party native code.

This is what asm.js and OdinMonkey are for. You're right that forbidding developers from getting the control that native code buys you is a nonstarter, but asm.js gives you that control.

Point 2 applies more for Ubuntu Phone, as it runs native apps, than for Firefox OS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com