Mozilla overhauls Firefox smartphone plan to focus on quality, not cost
cnet.com
cnet.com
I bought the mid-spec Flame developer device out of curiosity, and it's not much better. Everything feels slow, sluggish and unresponsive. Even Android 2.x was better.
My quad-core i7 desktop still occasionally struggles to render the latest and greatest HTML5 stuff at 60 fps. How on earth do they expect a phone to do the same?
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-...
Ironically my biggest complaint was that web browsing would bog down on pages with a lot of content... and I think that might have been a memory thing. Most of the phone/app stuff seemed fine (except the maps application, which was nigh unusable for me, not sure if that was CPU bound, memory bound, bandwidth bound, or just the wrong mapping service).
> The other really weird thing missing is any kind of battery backup for the time. If the phone loses power, the time and date gets reset, leaving it looking like an old VCR blinking "12:00."
This seems insane for a device released just a few months ago... when you can get a lumia, which is very reasonable, for just 5$ more, why would anyone bother with this?
The point of the Firefox phone was always to have an OS that was open in ways that Android isn't. That was never going to come in cheapest.
Firefox OS works basically like AOSP - it's up to vendor to provide you unlocked environment (or not). It's not even on a requirement list when you want to market your device using Firefox OS brand. Phones like ZTE Open often came with blocked bootloader you had to "jailbreak" to upgrade FxOS by yourself - seems familiar, doesn't it?
Some time ago I tried to compile Firefox OS to GTA04 - a hardware upgrade for Openmoko Neo Freerunner. It's pretty much the most open mobile phone out there these days, allowing you to run basically any GNU/Linux distro you'd want on it. I failed - available documentation is lacking; or actually, it focuses on something completely different. It assumes that you either have a Android phone and goes to great extent describing how to extract non-free binary blobs from your current system and apply them to FxOS, or you have a great knowledge of Android build system and you can handle everything by yourself. GTA04 isn't Android based - while there is Replicant build working on it, it's still closer to standard PC way than Android phones when it comes to stuff like booting etc. Not having much experience with Android from developer side, I simply got lost in all those clearly Android-based instructions.
You'd at least think that Gonk, the hardware abstraction layer of Firefox OS implemented on top of Android base system, would be just a compatibility measure for dealing with vendors that only provide Android support. It's not the case - even though Honk (a Gonk reimplementation based on standard GNU/Unix way of how systems work) exists, it was contributed as a part of experimental Raspberry Pi port and is not really maintained ever since. It makes me sad, cause Firefox OS had the potential to actually move smartphones in general towards being a little more open platforms, which is always close to my heart as a long-time Openmoko and OpenPhoenux supporter and contributor, but sadly this aspect got basically ignored by Mozilla itself and they went with pragmatic "let's just make it work, even if it means having non-free low-level androidware under our free OS layer" :(
Also Firefox OS is a partnership with hardware vendors and folks such as ZTE, LG, TCL don't see value in opening the bootloader. The baseband providers don't see value in opening the RIL... and so it goes.
There are of course also freesmartphone.org's fsogsmd and oFono. You could probably develop an Android layer on top of them if you wanted, bringing great value not just to Firefox OS, but also to AOSP itself.
Mozilla does not make hardware. Partners make hardware and they need to recover their cost.
I have a couple FxOS phones in here, they all have time set just fine. I don't have the 35$ device though.
So Firefox OS has an advantage over it's competitors at the low end: it's competitors have to run their windowing system and a browser simultaneously; Firefox OS only has to run the browser.
1. As far as the effect of the window manager: this isn't emacs+X11 in 1995: the drag on CPU/ram/battery of gecko/blink will dwarf the "weight" of the windowing system.
2. FirefoxOS maybe be leaner in principle, but the competition has vastly better hardware, both in the Windows Phone field and in the Android one, via what I can guess is a combination of subsidies (is mobile MS still burning piles of cash or has the division posted some profits?) and sheer mass scale production. So, for little more money you get a get a better device that actually runs all the apps that your friends have, and a web browser.
3. The appeal of FirefoxOS even in those low end markets was negligible (this has been discussed to death). Besides they released phones in places such as Italy and Spain, two markets were people will en masse shell out the cash for an Iphone. I found that simply baffling.
1. As far as the effect of the window manager: this isn't emacs+X11 in 1995: the drag on CPU/ram/battery of gecko/blink will dwarf the "weight" of the windowing system.
2. FirefoxOS maybe be leaner in principle, but the competition has vastly better hardware, both in the Windows Phone field and in the Android one, via what I can guess is a combination of subsidies (is mobile MS still burning piles of cash or has the division posted some profits?) and sheer mass scale production. So, for little more money you get a get a better device that actually runs all the apps that your friends have, and a web browser.
3. The appeal of FirefoxOS even in those low end markets was negligible (this has been discussed to death). Besides they released phones in places such as Italy and Spain, two markets were people will en masse shell out the cash for an Iphone. I found that simply baffling.
On the second and the third point I'll both agree with you and continue disagreeing. Yes, in some places a FirefoxOS is the only option. And yes, negligible is was a dickish term. But I was specifically talking about points on a graph. This doesn't make the project worthless (as I guess my post made it sound), but, IMHO, also means that the result will not fundamentally change the trajectory of the web and of the mobile market. One can obviously reply that giving someone their first smartphone should be enough, and that is a perfectly tenable position.
On the specific example of those two countries, I'll happily take back my complaint.
One thing to keep in mind is that Mozilla is not a company, it has no shareholders, it doesn't need to do anything besides fulfilling its mission (while trying to be sustainable) so even if the data points on the graph are not as pleasant as we wish them to be, the fact that some people are joining the web for the first time is an important objective for Mozilla. We can't look at Mozilla progress and decisions through the same lens as we look at Apple and Google and Microsoft. They all operate in the same space (the web) but the objectives and means are different.
Here is an explanation from the mailing list, so at least Mozilla are aware of the issue. https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=msg/mozi...
> The reason for this is because gecko determines how the user interface > (implemented in the gaia layer) actually behaves. There may be bugs in future > versions of gecko that break parts of the UI, and the carriers/manufacturers > understandably don't want to just push these updates without verifying them > first.
Obviously to gather more customers and to get people to believe in the product you need a higher-end phone. They wanted to avoid competing directly with iPhone or Android.
One don't need HTML5 at 60fps. One need HTML5 apps that work. Movies are not 60fps. The only place where you need 60fps is games and that type of game is not the objective of the devices you've seen running Firefox OS.
What is needed is quality HTML5 apps. The old Pre2 and Pre3 webOS devices had some pretty amazing HTML5 apps. The usability was great even if the phone slowed sometimes. UX is better than FPS. Usability trumps benchmarks.
The problem is when you code for the high-end place of the spectrum with evergreen browsers and stuff and try to shoehorn that into a phone. thats when misery happens.
Instead of reading a review from written by someone used to high-end devices and ubiquitous networking. Look for those people in India and South America who are buying Firefox OS devices as their first smartphone because they couldn't afford a higher-end device. Look for their feedback. Many are accessing the web on a personal device for the first time. Its a life transforming opportunity once the doors to the vast knowledge repository of the web is open. I can go on for hours on where Firefox OS shines but I will not bore you. Just don't try to compare it against Android and iOS devices, that was never the objective.
Smooth response is absolutely essential for touch usability. Without it, you can not have any sort of precision on an already imprecise input method. To achieve this, you really do need to near 60 frames per second.
When the simplest list (let alone a complex web page) constantly trails behind your finger and has to catch up with rendering, it becomes very difficult to find what you're looking for. It's crucial that what happens on screen is connected to what you're doing, or you have to constantly try and consciously correct for the software that just can't keep up.
A budget phone doesn't need to match the latest and greatest iPhone 6 in smoothness, but there is a baseline performance that has to be met for usability.
> Many are accessing the web on a personal device for the first time... just don't try to compare it against Android and iOS devices, that was never the objective.
If you actually read the review I linked, it turns out the $35 phone is practically worthless for any web browsing or just about anything. And once you go past that price point, FxOS has competition. Android One and low-end OEM's like Micromax already provide devices that are years ahead in performance, usability and functionality.
I would love to see mobile devices that are not touch based. Touch requires a very high premium on performance. Buttons would have worked wonders. For a FirefoxOS phone where it is Gen 1, the start should have been a button phone and every developer would be required to create an interface that would work well with buttons.
fps is part of UX. Your comment is akin to saying that when typesetting a book, the font size doesn't matter, the paper quality does. Each element is important and pretending that they are mutually exclusive makes no sense.
The only conclusion I can draw from your comment is that you have never done user or A/B testing with sub 30fps apps. Having a sub 30fps app means that your app is literally half as responsive as the vast majority of smart phone and desktop software, and the user can always, always tell. They won't use the words "frames per second", but what they will say is "Your app feels slow." Try scrolling down a list of items on a Firefox OS vs a iPhone 6 and tell me which one has the better UX.
Also the phrase:
Try scrolling down a list of items on a Firefox OS vs a iPhone 6 and tell me which one has the better UX.
The fact that people think that the epitome of UX is "fast scrolling lists" or fps shows what is wrong with this industry. UX is how you get a positive user experience given the constraints you have and not how to squeeze every single fps out of every single computing core.
If you're in a low-spec device, you restrict animation and scrolling tall elements. You pre-cache and pre-render whatever you can. You find another UI scheme to use besides "hamburger menu + scrolling tall thing". Don't mix fps to how responsive your app is. fps is how fast it can blit stuff to screen, thats not the same as how fast it can handle user input. The A/B Testing helps with creating the UI for low-specs.
I'd use that thing a lot more, if the applications were usable. I don't care about 'smooth', neither fancy. My constant complains are the keyboard, the lack of push support, the lack of a decent mail client (which .. needs push support. And server-side searches!) etc. are the real issues. Heck, even browsing is bad on a FxOS device.
I don't think it's the paradigm that is to blame here. The problem is the state of things, not the foundation as far as I'm concerned.
(Was a WebOS fan myself. That stuff was amazing for its time)
HTML5 based shells/"OS" have certainly a bright future (ChromeOS is already popular and there is WebOS running in newer LG SmartTVs). A HTML5 based windows manager for Linux/Windows are probably the next thing - that allow offline web apps and native GUI applications to run next to each other and with the windows being actually HTML iframes.
Those devices aren't really phones anymore...
As a flame owner I do understand where you're coming from, but the 'phone' part in there struck me as misleading. This S6E is basically a powerful! machine from a couple years back and probably better Graphic hardware to boot, unless that machine came with a gaming card or something.
(obviously the cheap phones don't compare to the S6 or the OnePlus One - but given that the announcement is moving away from the low-end sector I think this is worth considering)
Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. Everyday, apps become more and more dependent on Google Play services, the proprietary set of libraries that Google controls on Android devices. Developers need an open version of Google Play Services (Mozilla Mobile Services?) and even a competitive app store (10% commission instead of 30%?). The natural next step would be to create their own distribution of Android and release it on quality hardware. Not only would they be furthering the cause of free software and open computing, but they would have a revenue stream to continue their mission.
What if they took over Cyangenmod or forked it?
This is cool and all, but history has shown that people somehow prefer Android with Google apps. Cyanogen has announced that they're taking Android back and all from Google and I wonder how it'll work out at the end. I wouldn't mind seeing the same thing from Mozilla or even more players, but the sad reality is that enthusiasts don't make revenue.
a) everything is moving to mobile, and
b) every mobile OS ships its own browser which is not Firefox.
We know from Netscape how hard it is to stay relevant against that kind of pressure, and there isn't even a way to cry "Anti-trust!" because none of these players are monopolies. They just all behave the same way.
> starting an entirely new OS.
Gonk, the core of FxOS, is based on Android. It is 'only' Gaia (the UI) that was written anew in HTML, along with performance work on the Gecko rendering engine.
Keeping the UI all in HTML5 (and rendered entirely by Gecko) meant they had to develop APIs and improve OpenWebApps as a spec to fill on the common use cases.
> Shipping a Mozilla Android with their own app store and Firefox
... would require Mozilla supporting a lot more Java code and use cases that don't further the Firefox mission. What does Mozilla gain from running a third-party Android app store, and the support costs that entails?
FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further and faster than a Mozilla-branded Android fork ever would have.
Re: "FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further," I don't see how FxOS is anything other than a waste of resources if it fails.
If Mozilla went the route of rebranding Android, they needn't fork it entirely. They could just apply their branding & app store on top of Google's releases. The app store is a necessary component because Google won't allow the use of theirs (at least without a price), and it's a user expectation of any mobile OS. (even FxOS has an app store; marketplace.firefox.com)
It's unrealistic to expect Mozilla would become a dominant mobile platform in the foreseeable future, no matter what they do. Like Microsoft, they just need to have some territory, for now. (perhaps they should also consider partnerships with "the new Microsoft", Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)
That leaves the "open web" approach as the major differentiator between Firefox OS and Android. Whilst I'm a fan of open standards, I doubt the average consumer is going to care enough for Firefox OS to make inroads into Android's dominance of the low-cost smartphone market (in fact, I'd question whether they'll care at all).
At this point, if I were on the Mozilla Foundation board, I think I'd be pushing for a cost-benefit assessment of continued investment into Firefox OS.
1: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424454/android-marches-...
Google has Android which is open source but "spyware" prone and suffers from vendor incompetence/uninterest in updates -- in fact this will bite Google sooner or latter. While Apple's iOS is privacy aware but closed source and carries a huge price premium.
On the other hand Mozilla is known for open source and for caring for privacy. Furthermore with Snowden's revelations, at least among the IT crowd, as well as governments, there is interest for a secure system.
Give me a high-end phone [1] which focus on privacy.
Something that supports a stack like Xposed and Xprivacy out of the box.
Something whose baseband processor is decoupled from the other processors. And if possible the source code for the sensors or at least the ICD, so that you have an alternative to binary blobs.
Give me something that supports encryption and can get consistent no hassle OTA updates.
And make it with a compatibility layer to Android's apps [2]
I'm all for open source, but Android just ends up being nothing but an headache. A better solution would be welcome.
[1] just look at the OnePlus One for $350 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus_One In fact Mozilla should have partnered with them.
Also, mozilla does not make hardware, it can't provide you with the hardware safety you need.
Android is not open source. AOSP is open source but a lot of the stuff you see in a modern high-end Android device is not OSS. On the other hand, all of Firefox OS, its built-in apps and its associated services are FOSS. You can check the code and audit it.
Full disclosure: I found this project so worth supporting, I actually became team member somewhere at its beginning :)
I do think iOS devices are generally a good deal (in the sense that they are worth the money),but that doesn't mean they are not premium nor premium priced. Quality costs money.
For the class of IoT devices that are capable of running Linux, Google thinks they can turn Android into a "headless" configuration that uses Android's runtime and base classes, presumably minus the UI classes. Android is, in fact, pretty darn efficient.
And on top of all that, Mozilla thought a Web runtime could be made as efficient as a Java-ish runtime that has a very memory-efficient component architecture? That's just strange.
Heck, your platform doesn't even need to be open to be able to market it with Firefox OS brand! They have a set of rules you have to fulfill, but basic stuff like unlocked bootloader isn't even part of them.
Quoting from the email, "This will be the phone that you want to use, and will use every day." For this to be true, these are some of the key things for Mozilla to focus on:
* The responsiveness of the UI.
* A good camera (at least 5MP).
* A decent amount of memory to hold multiple apps (in dormant mode) and reduce startup times of recently used apps.
Running Android apps may be a good interim strategy while apps targeted and optimized for Firefox phones are developed. But this assumes that the phones can run them well. Otherwise it would just backfire completely, leaving Firefox phones as useless devices.
I can't wait for a well performing Firefox phone that's widely available (even if that means costing a few hundred dollars or equivalent)! It'd be great if Firefox can come to fourth place or (gasp) third place in the mobile OS wars.
The only way I see it happening would be if Mozilla gets some big partner in e.g. China to push Firefox phones.
Different idea: why not work on something like PhoneGap that's powered by Firefox? If you can create a super powerful framework/dev environment that rivals native (and uses all the smarts and resources of Mozilla to address all current flaws of these existing frameworks), then you could have devs building in a more cross platform & "open" manner. From there you might actually have enough apps compatible to run Firefox os, or better, have that not matter as much because you're what's underneath every app.
I have a hard time seeing Mozilla make inroads at this point otherwise.
The developing world doesn't need telephones, they need secure and convenient means to transfer data wirelessly and code that works with sporadic, slow, shared connectivity. Frankly, they need crypto plus mesh networking.
Make it a platform for privacy-controlled social networking, high scores, app updates ... it should differentiate far enough to win users.
Basically, make it the hacker's choice ... then, you'll get applications, too.
A cheap version without GSM or CDMA would be an option.
1) It's hard to explain to customers who are used to the current ISP internet access paradigm. This barrier can be overcome.
2) Not only do you need to win customers, you need to win a critical mass of customers within a focused geographic area. #2 is very, very hard imo.
For problem #1, if it works at the consumer level then I think people don't really care about how it works.
For #2, I think the current model of 'use free wifi from coffee shops, hotels, bars, restaurants' that seems globally dominant would work fine.
2) If the usage pattern is primarily about internet connectivity, rather than local communication, then the nodes nearest the ISP would quickly become saturated with traffic.
3) If people can modify the software on their radios (and mesh networking is a very popular idea with the Free Software community) then they are Free not to waste their own resources altruistically forwarding traffic for others. You would need to design the incentive structure carefully. Probably some combinations of micro-payments, surge pricing/auction, and bitcoin. Otherwise a simple reputation system (bad "seed ratio"-type metric, no connectivity).
4) The big one. Mesh networking bridges the gap when you have A->B and B->C but not A->C. But if you are in a challenging enough RF environment that you don't have A->C then you probably don't have A->B and B->C either. RF is barely usable (if at all) without line of sight, and putting a repeater in the sky is a rock-solid method of getting line of sight. Hence it is the basis for all wide-area RF communications systems. Mesh improves upon certain arrangements of $35 Motorola FRS handhelds, but not all of them (whereas "repeater in the sky" architectures are unfazed).
Peer-to-peer RF is cool when you are in RF-friendly environments doing mostly peer-to-peer traffic (not access to an ISP). It works in the places where it has always worked, where handheld radios without repeaters have always been useful. Protests and disaster recovery efforts are two such examples. Internet connectivity for the masses is a different beast.
Even to take a niche, they need a remarkable positive differentiator. As the quote in the article says, "In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Rhetoric like "change the world" isn't it - the specifics matter. "Embrace the web" isn't a differentiator when all Smartphones can browse websites. I welcome you to find in that article anything but a few planned features which might just keep Firefox OS alive without necessarily giving it a competitive advantage.
After watching a few years, I'm not sure even Mozilla knows what the differentiator will be to consumers, because what I always see from them in this kind of press-release piece are vague phrases like "the open web". So for years I have been a little confused about exactly what they are trying to do. A possible clue is that whenever you drill down on projects to which these catchphrases have been applied, what it really boils down to is more Javascript. Please try an experiment: every time you see "the open web" mentioned by Mozilla, see if the same sentence makes as much sense substituting "Javascript."
For years this has bothered me because "the open web" does not literally mean "Javascript," yet Mozilla and its fans consistently equivocate between the two. What I realize now is that this isn't because Mozilla is confused about the difference, it's because their core allegiance is to Brandan Eich's brainchild and phrases like "open web" are just a chosen mode of evangelizing Javascript. Maybe Mozilla doesn't know exactly what an all-Javascript world will exactly bring to consumers, but they want it anyway because that is their understanding of their mission.
The problem with this is that Javascript advocacy doesn't necessarily have a lot of benefit to consumers or even to programmers other than diehard Javascript fans. To be plain, basically nobody gives a rat's ass if their phone uses more Javascript than Java. It doesn't make anything more open to use Javascript rather than other technologies, openness is a matter of licensing and maybe development process. In practice you still end up with a lot of Javascript APIs specific to Firefox OS (and therefore a collection of apps).
The flaw in the plan is that no one has tried to get something like Google Docs working on Firefox OS/Mobile and then tried to tune and optimize performance until it worked properly.
If they focused on getting heavy websites to load in under a second come hell or high water, they would have made the web browser king on the phone. Instead we have Facebook cutting out the browser by caching the content of news sites.
You will, of course, be limited to the APIs available in standard Javascript. At the moment that means missing a lot of things that people might want to be able to do (or need to be able to do to write things that act like freestanding apps instead of websites). The way Mozilla tried to get around that was to add a lot of Firefox OS specific APIs and then claim that those APIs were part of 'the open web' because they were going to submit them for standardisation at some point in the future.
Mozilla seem to think that they are the sole arbiter of what the web standards are. The APIs they want to add are 'open' and 'standard' and anybody who is against adding those APIs is an entryist enemy of 'the open web'. APIs proposed by other vendors that Mozilla dislikes are an attack on the open web.
That's not how it works.
Things only become standards (formally or de facto) when all (or nearly all) of the big browser vendors support them. That's the definition of an open standards based platform - it's lowest common denominator. If you don't like that reality then you don't like open standards based platforms. There was little sign that the other browser vendors had any interest in adding a bunch of FirefoxOS specific APIs (just as how Mozilla have rejected various proposals from other vendors over the years).
You can argue that all this is very unfair. Why should Apple and Google and Microsoft have veto power over what APIs are available on FirefoxOS? But this is a trap of Mozilla's own choosing. It's the fundamental problem with the dream of a single platform standard for all user facing software. It creates a tight sandbox (both software architecturally and politically) that gives the big players veto power over everything. The idea of a single grand standard platform with perfect compatibility across all devices is certainly alluring, but it has huge downsides that nobody ever seems to really want to talk about. And that's before you get to the technical issues to do with the web standards being pretty crappy for complex GUI development.
Privacy. And their history and non-profit status makes them hard to compete with for users' trust in that area.
It might not attract the masses, but it will easily snag a big following among people that care about this stuff.
I'm not saying low cost phones in developing nations aren't a good goal. That's a wonderful thing, and I think I can understand how the people at Mozilla, who almost always prioritize doing good over doing well, would make the mistake of thinking that building a phone that is good for people in the developing world would be a good way to start their mobile effort.
But, and as much as I hate to say this because it reveals a crass consumerism that has infected the world and patient zero is the US, the reality is that modern phones are luxury items that need some of the trappings of luxury...even in developing nations, where they look to the west to define their fashion and trends. If Mozilla can't win a developed world market, they won't be able to convince people in developing nations that what they've built is worthwhile, especially when there are knockoff Android devices that only cost a few bucks more, which are much closer to what people in the developed world are using.
I could see how it might even seem patronizing to the poorest folks.
I don't know what Mozilla should do; I'm not a mobile mogul. But, I want a Firefox phone. I've wanted one since they announced they were making them. I want one a lot, actually. But, I don't want a shitty phone that's less powerful than my last three Android phones, no matter the price. It's also never been clear to me, as an American, where I can even buy a real FxOS phone. There are dev phones, but they seemed to always just be "sign up for our waiting list" or whatever, which is not something I really do.
It's all about the apps that people use. Remember MS Office? Oh, nice Macs said the IT managers, do they run MS Office?
Go cut a deal with Zucker and get Whatsapp for FFOS then the phones will sell.
- No performance regressions. Somehow, the blazing fast device I bought a couple of years ago now feels sluggish. Core apps should be timeless: the dialer, the keyboard, task switcher shouldn't be slower two years after purchase.
- Graceful degradation. Websites have no easy way to detect how fast a device is, so they are built for the majority with a bias for the newest and fastest. The result is that cheap and old devices get obsoleted even for the simple stuff. If a $25 phone is as powerful as a 2000 computer, then let the developer feature-detect it and design for it.
- Good permissions. I don't know the solution but there's a problem. Android's model is depressingly bad. iOS's is too dumbed-down to be trustworthy. Firefox's granularity is good to have but web developers seem to assume the user is always going to grant the permission. I always grunt at websites which want my position to find a store near me and display a blank page when I reject it.
- Timely OS updates. Firefox already has a fast release cycle regardless of the desktop OS. Why can't mobile be the same? I believe kernel patches are less of an issue with web apps because the kernel isn't the first line defense.
- Reasonably priced. The $100-200 range is already full of good Android devices. Just make deals with manufacturers to sell a Firefox version of those. They already sell dozens of different phones, so it should be feasible to convince them to add a couple identical devices with a different OS. FirefoxOS only needs one good device.
- Security. Better sandbox the blackboxes (drivers and radio).
Those were my pain points, but I'm willing to make sacrifices:
- 60 FPS isn't that important for me. I care more about response time when I tap something.
- Most animations/transitions won't be missed. Some add value but marginally so. Most are arbitrary and useless.
- Most apps won't be missed. I only use a few.
Apple is margin-driven. Google is ad-driven. They already cause pain to the consumer and market dominance will only make matters worse. They also are walled gardens so they cause pain to the developer. Mozilla is indeed in a similar position to that of the 2000s.
The LG or KDDI Fx0 was the coolest looking phone I have seen in the last 5 years. But it was unreasonably priced at nearly 400 USD
I recently stumbled across the geeksphone revolution which actually seems to be a high-end phone and at a nice pricetag of less than 200 USD.
I switched to a Moto E, and I think it actually lags a little more for things like opening the clock app, but I'm basically addicted to Fennec's reader view and sync.
(The "system browser" in FxOS 3.0 is also a major regression on tab UX IMO.)
More specifically, I tend to open and close a lot of tabs, which involves more steps now, and I want new tabs to open in the background.
I think then you might see a whole range of independent homescreens and app suites developed and offer some well designed alternatives.
I'm a nexus 4 user and I really don't like all the basics. The dialer, contact list, messaging. I think they are confusing and difficult to navigate.
Small (ipod mini or nano sized),
Durable and Water proof,
long lasting battery,
E-inc (or similar) display,
Able to play music while using navigation
and
Able to play music while browsing the web.
If Mozilla can put this phone together I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
The nice thing about web technologies is that there isn't a single party that controls the APIs. I don't know any other comprehensive API collection with this property (POSIX is in the same ball park, but which POSIX-only application is mass market compatible these days?)
At one point they(or the company that spawned them) built a web browser that they sold. Then they were the non-profit offshoot of that keeping an open source browser alive.
But now they're... erm... what is it exactly that they are? They're a non-profit that sells browser searches, or something. I'm confused.
In short, they try to save the Internet from being run by a few corporations or governments. So, minus cape, they're trying to do superhero things that are often at odds with the biggest companies in the world. Whether they succeed in that with any given project is up for debate, of course.
So far, Firefox phones have been a flop. Personally, I want one, because I care about privacy and I care about the open web, but I don't really want a shitty $25 phone. This news is good for me, but I don't know what it says for Mozilla's vision in the mobile market.
I've heard people suggest that Android took a while to catch on...but, it really didn't. By the time Android had been on the market for a year, it was clear (to me, anyway) that it would become the dominant player for many of the same reasons Wintel became the dominant desktop platform. Firefox OS doesn't have much to show for the time they've been on the market. It was never even clear to me I could buy a "real" phone (i.e. not developer phone) in the US running FxOS.
I don't see Mozilla turning around because they are trying to be followers where both Apple and Google are executing well enough at least to maintain Status quo. Why go after Smart Phone Market while at best you can be 3rd or 4th best (with less than 5% market share)?
Why is it so hard to sell an unlocked smartphone direct to consumers in the USA?