ZTE Will Soon Start Sales of Firefox OS Phones on eBay | Hacker News Reader

ZTE Will Soon Start Sales of Firefox OS Phones on eBay

blog.mozilla.org

53 pointsabrowne17 comments

It looks like this phone takes a Micro SIM, but I was planning on getting the next iPhone when it comes out which will require a Nano SIM. Does anyone have experience in swapping a Nano SIM into a micro SIM slot with an adaptor and how big a pain is it to do?

Many SIM cards come with the adapter, and many cell phone companies will give an adapter for free if you visit their booth in a mall or a retail location. It's really just like a Micro SD to SD adapter; Nano SIM is smaller but with the same connectors.

I suppose it's probably regional, but here you just walk into a telecom's shop, and they'll replace sim size A with sim size B. There may be a token fee for this, depending.

tldr; it works just fine.

It is a tiny bit fiddly getting the card in the right place in the adapter (basically just a little piece of plastic), but then it slots in and just works. As long as you are not dexterity challenged, it shouldn't be a problem at all. The adapter is also just a very simple bit of plastic, so buy one from amazon or ebay for a buck.

The SIM I got from a Heathrow vending machines supported all the phones by giving you a nano and then adapters up to bigger sizes.

I took scissors and a ruler to my SIM card, and chopped it to size, following an online guide. Worked like a charm.

Not sure about adaptors but I was able to get a new SIM card from my carrier for about $10.

My understanding is that you can't have two SIM card's use the same number, so I'd have to call and activate/deactivate each time I wanted to switch phones?

I believe that is no longer the case, at least in Spain. Certain operators offer a 2nd SIM card (with the same number) for a few extra euros a month.

In that case though, you can only speak through one of the phones at a time; however, both benefit from the data connection.

It could be an exciting phone, but from the demo video two or three times there was tearing/slugging happening while using it. Also one or two times it was not responsive to the user touch.

The demo you're seeing is running a version of Firefox OS based on Firefox 18, which is quite old now. Soon, version 1.1 will be released which will include some optimizations to the front end and help improve performance. By the end of the year, though, you can expect an OTA update to be released ("B2G 1.2") which is based on Firefox 26 (the current equivalent of Firefox Nightly). The performance improvements you'll see will be very noticeable.

  > The performance improvements you'll see will be very
  > noticeable.

What makes you tink so?

The version of FXOS that's presently shipping has a lot of rough edges. The B2G 26 branch includes all of the changes made between Firefox 18 and Firefox 26, many of which are performance related. Notably, JS performance is going to shoot up (new Spidermonkey goodness), SVG performance is going to get a boost (better hardware acceleration, better caching), and lots of general optimizations are going to land.

I'd like to think of the current FXOS builds as the Android 1.6 of the product, and the forthcoming versions as the Android 2.2/2.3s of the product.

Am I the only one looking at the $80 price for an unlocked smartphone and going ZOMGWTFBBQ? I mean, what's the hitch?

Anyone in London looking for one? I may have a free one email me with your intentions.

Can't see your email on your page, but I've been interested in getting my hands on one since hacked.io. Want to see what webapps I can hack together for it. My email is orestmayski@yandex.com if you offer still stands.

Thanks :)

It will be available only in US and UK ebay stores :(

  Firefox OS smartphones literally change and transform with the user to meet their needs at any moment.

literally

Reply on news.ycombinator.com