Mozilla’s Firefox OS Gets First Update, Heads for Second Phase of Launches | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla’s Firefox OS Gets First Update, Heads for Second Phase of Launches

techcrunch.com

127 pointskeviv41 comments

I think the most important thing Firefox OS can do, even if it's not a financial success, is to bring Mozilla – and in extension everyone who cares about openness – to the discussion table. This can, if played right, become a very effective tactic at standardizing things on the phone/device platform.

It's a fact that the web is playing a more important part on phones, and no-one has quite yet been able to figure out how to integrate it well in a native environment. Rethinking the phone environment with the browser sandbox as a toolkit is a very interesting, but also bold approach.

So whether Firefox OS takes off or not is really of secondary interest to me. I'm just happy that people who care about curating and caring for the web are making their voices heard.

I'd love to get FFOS updates in my ZTE Open because 1.0.1 feels more like a dev preview than an end user product, to the point that it is almost useless as a smartphone.

I can see the potential, but I'm not buying a new device just for that.

I second you, mine is buggy (some times I cannot respond to a call) and missing needed feature for me (like a notification when new email arrive)

I just noticed today the email app has periodic sync on a current build, so hopefully it is on 1.2 (or 1.3)

Yeah, I'm really surprised they started selling devices as consumer-ready so early. They're great as dev test devices, but I wouldn't want to use one day-to-day.

If you bought the original G1 with Android on it (mine is still hiding in the back of my desk), it's not much different. You have to start somewhere.

they mainly sold it as a replacement to feature phones, not to high-end smartphones. in that regard, it makes sense.

that people try to replace their high-end smartphones with it, looks pretty promising if anything (and even if it falls a bit short for now)

whats great is that anyone can improve it and they'll take the fixes. Unlike Android/Google, which refuse any external code [except some from samsung apparently] (yay openbullshit..)

I have been using it as my main phone every other week since release. TBH, I haven't run into bugs so much as curious features (or lack of features). Are there particular bugs you keep hitting? If anything, it seems a bit more stable than my Cyanogen-running Nexus.

The worst "feature" offender I have found is that when talking on the phone, if a call comes in, the screen activates. If the phone is close touching my ear, it has a habit of picking up the incoming call without any notification.

The Keyboard is pretty terrible. Several of my apps just don't launch, (Here, Notes off the top of my head), apps crash pretty regularly (reddit pretty often). Reception isn't the best and it drops calls pretty regularly on me.

its a lot better in 1.3 nightly, if you feel adventurous. no swype but it feels about as good as on my iphone.

It feels half-cooked both because of missing features and bugs.

I can understand some of the missing features (such as can't upload files, no clipboard, the keyboard is small and irresponsible or only en_US available), but some bugs are really painful, being the biggest one when you're browsing a website and the the browser hangs leaving your mobile completely dead for way too long (I had to remove the battery a couple of times). For an OS that is basically a browser, this is really bad.

Also I've found both the wireless and the data connection to be unreliable. Sometimes it refuses to work and only a reboot will fix it.

I'm not an advanced Android user, but I can't do the few things I used to do before using the ZTE Open as daily smartphone. As I said the ZTE Open needs an OS update, really.

I also got an Open, planning on using it as my everyday phone, at least for a while. My requirements for this role weren't too stringent, since it's a new platform. So the only two things it needed to do was perform and receive calls, and allow me to manage contacts.

It fails miserably on the second one. The only options to import contacts are through Facebook, which I don't use, and from a SIM card, which is what I ended up using. Pretty limited, to say the least, but the real kicker is that it has no option to actually export contacts. So if you use it for a while and decide either to wipe the device, or to stop using it, you have no option to retrieve contacts you've since added. I've investigated if it was possible to at least back them up using an ADB shell (it is, supposedly it's an sqlite DB), but apparently you need root on the device to do this, which isn't possible on the default install. I didn't investigate any further when I realized I was actually using Android debug tools at 3 am to get my contacts out of a supposedly consumer ready device.

Needless to say any software updates probably aren't forthcoming from ZTE, since even the upgrade routine fails with an error on these devices (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/967817).

Another thing that bugs me is that while Mozilla are distancing themselves, and their branding, from the likes of the Geeksphone Peak+ (http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/25/peak-plus), which as far as I can tell receives timely updates and has a vibrant community, saying it's not a Firefox OS phone, they're also busy directing people to the manufacturers (ZTE in this case) whenever there is a problem with the officially blessed Firefox OS version running on the first consumer grade FFOS phone.

Next time I waste more time trying to get basic functionality working, I'll just build my own updated images of FFOS (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/...) and see if things have improved by then.

I've been using a developer Peek as a primary phone for the last few weeks (running a 1.1 preview).

I've had problems with the UI not responding to touches (never on the keyboard, so I'm pretty sure it's a software issue), and with data cutting out, and not coming back until I toggle data several times.

Admittedly, I'm not sure whether these issues are hardware, the particular beta software I have, or FFOS (I should have been filing bug reports).

Issues with Firefox OS:

1. Browser only loads one tab at a time.

2. Inability to lock the screen orientation to either Portrait or Landscape.

Issues with ZTE Open:

1. Mediocre touchscreen sensitivity.

2. Short USB cable.

I have no idea if Firefox OS is going to take off or not, but I am looking forward for it to do well. I am not saying that as someone who thinks HTML5 is the best way to build apps, because it really isn't. I just like seeing Android having a great competitor that is open source and not driven by a huge company like Samsung. Also, this will keep Mozilla alive and relevant for at least another decade. That's a good thing and a very big deal IMO.

Also, I love the look of the devices so far.

> someone who thinks HTML5 is the best way to build apps, because it really isn't.

> I just like seeing Android having a great competitor that is open source and not driven by a huge company like Samsung

You're basically looking for Ubuntu Touch, http://www.ubuntu.com/phone (official launch towards the end of this month, and your best bet would be a Galaxy Nexus)

The only issue with Ubuntu Touch is that no one knows how much traction it will get, or if it will continue to be developed. Firefox OS already has traction, devices are already in the wild, and likely will have staying power (Mozilla seems to get alot of their projects and standards out there).

Someone who would know told me that the sales numbers in places where the devices have been released are above what they were even hoping for, though they did not get more specific than that. Take that bit of third-hand hearsay for whatever you think it's worth.

Are you asserting that HTML/CSS/JS is not at all viable/desirable for making apps, or just not your personal preference? I'd like to know what you feel is best if the latter (and what you feel stops the former - having a standardized high-level platform has advantages!)

I've built HTML/CSS/JS mobile apps with phonegap and while it's fun as a developer, the user experience is just not as good as building a proper native app.

If you care about user experience, build using what is native to the platform.

This is why most web devs don't build web apps using Flash or Java applets anymore. Those aren't native to the platform and don't provide the best possible user experience.

HTML/JS as "native" apps to a platform can absolutely work and be awesome, but it really comes down to what "native" on a given platform means. On Android it's Java, on iOS it's Obj-C, on Windows it's C#, on a web browser or Firefox OS it's HTML/JS.

Thanks, I appreciate the details. There definitely is a "happy path" for each platform, where tools/docs/developer support and getting into the marketplaces and so forth is much simpler and well-understood - things can get dicey when you stray from that.

Using a document markup as your application structural layout, in an environment built around either static links or argument supplemented static links, with the concepts of forward and backward through a chain of pieces of content, I think is a really poor way to design applications.

For a better UX and developer experience, that still uses JS, just look at QML. Declarative, application focused, and scriptable in JS. Easy to create one UI that transitions to other layouts, but the elements are first, not the text within them.

The open source comment has me puzzled. Where does it differ from Android in that regard?

Edit: I may have misread, I agree it is good to have more open source mobile OSes :)

The development process is arguably more open - everything happens in public repositories, many different individuals and companies are involved at all stages, etc. Android does parts of the development in a private tree, see http://source.android.com/faqs.html

Android itself is definitely open-source in a technical sense though, and they share a ton of useful changes back to the kernel and userspace apps that Firefox OS and many other projects use and contribute to as well.

There is one pretty big difference. Android is developed by google behind closed doors and then released to the world once they think it is ready. You don't get to see the code or influence it during development. Firefox OS is developed in the open, all the code is on github and you can join the lists and participate on the process.

I was really looking forward to checking FFOS out. But this article puts so much emphasis on carriers that I am a bit alarmed - I hope Mozilla manages to keep the FFOS open.

You can't have a smartphone without the support from carrier. Mozilla has to deal with carriers issue and this is why they really can't make FFOS available in North America yet (beside the fact that FFOS is still in early stage...)

You have to compromise with carriers and manufacturers without compromising user's privacy (FFOS tries its best to protect user's privacy, but certainly you can't do everything right?) Sometimes you have to choose certain hardware and certain price.

Mozilla is a giant but it doesn't ahve the resource Google does. So when it comes to negation, it depends on how much users Mozilla FFOs has.

The source code itself is open. Well the master copy. In the future there will be forks and I think Mozilla will keep its best effort to make sure phones running forks meet the standard (they are making such process, validation process to ensure Mozilla's standard is met before the build is released).

The biggest deal about FFOS so far is that I don't own a phone with this yet.

This propably doesn't matter for most end users, but I think the big delay between countries where it gets available is pretty bad in terms of marketing.

Think of FirefoxOS as a MVP - it created partnerships and an actual device, and proved there was a market in several countries underserved by current smartphones.

The article is about the very first iteration on top of this. I disagree that this is bad in terms of marketing - it would be the equivalent of trying to sell a MVP to a huge enterprise company before getting any users/traction/market validation - except in this case it'd be putting a phone in the hands of consumers who are used to more advanced features and a more mature ecosystem.

It really needs a VoIP, SSH and jabber client!

For Jabber there is loqui: http://loqui.im/ It already works pretty good on my peak :) (although I am not using it that much)

According to the author it should get a new release next Tuesday 15.10.2013: https://github.com/waalt/loqui/issues/54

What's the battery life like when using loqui? When not implemented well, XMPP clients can be a real drain on battery because of the polling and other frequent protocol messages.

I can't really say. Until it completely broke my connectivity I was using the nightly builds and there were sometimes other problems with the battery life (like wireless not really sleeping) so it's not easy to say if the drains were caused by loqui or other stuff.

On the newest 1.2 image I have no data connectivity and can only use it with wifi. As that is normally in places where I have a stationary desktop with a client I am not really using it at the moment.

I think they just implemented the push api (1.2?) without push anything like this will drain battery. so the clients will be decent battery wise (on par with android I suppose) 1.2 onwards i guess..

I'm confused by their page mentioning SSL, is this a normal xmpp client or some form of cloud proxy to my actual server?

Nevermind, it's probably going to come some day, but right now it's through a proxy:

«Currently all connections are made through the open BOSH gateway at http://app.loqui.im/http-bind but soon the app should be able to detect wether user's account provided has its own BOSH server and connect to it and if not, connect to a open BOSH from its country. In longer term, connections should be made through javascript TCPSockets API, avoiding the need for BOSH servers and thus improving performance and reliability.»

I really want to love the WebAPI idea, but until it can do actual TCP/IP, it's dead to me. (And I have a Peak! :/)

Is it possible to make an SSH client in HTML5?

I'm not sure how FFOS apps work, but the answer depends on how you define "SSH client in HTML5". [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3108453

Yes! There's a basic implementation for Raw Sockets that I used to port node-irc to FxOS: https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/fxos-irc

It would be like making a cathodic ray tube with oil paint :-)

But you could write one in JavaScript for FFOS, since it provides an access to raw TCP sockets:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TCPSocket

I would love to have someone fix https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=878972

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