This article is amazing, the way I interpreted it. Going through each screen, I kept thinking to myself, "oh boy, here's another FxOS hater who just doesn't get it". Then, at the end, the catharsis:
"To be honest I think the box achieves the goal. I do not expect FxOS to be complete. I expect it to have room for improvement and to be welcoming of my contributions. That is what FxOS needs right now, the luxury boxes can come later."
Amen. Well-written, and I hope you enjoy your new FxOS :)
I just wish Firefox OS would focus on constructing a system that counters all the other devices that are essentially nothing more than tracking devices for corporations and governments....to a degree that negates anything that any other society has had to deal with in the past. You think {pick your favorite flavor of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, or monarchy} was bad? At least in the past you had a slight chance to move around anonymously. Today it is impossible without an organized network of people willing to risk their lives and livelihood. For all intents and purposes it is impossible to move anonymously anymore, and even if you want to make the case that it is still possible....it will not in short order.
It's pretty hard to get rid of tracking completely:
* You probably want to use a mobile network (like GSM) for phone calls and data. As long as you're booked into the network, the carrier knows (approximately) where you are.
* If you use Wifi, you can be tracked by your MAC address
To just reduce the amount of tracking by companies (not governments) a little bit, it would help to use distributed services like XMPP instead of Whatsapp and Facebook. Then you could choose service providers that you trust, or host your own server, and still have interoperability with other people. Because businesses like lock-in, this will probably not happen for the majority of people.
> * If you use Wifi, you can be tracked by your MAC address
There is a startup that does exactly this - track MAC addresses of cell phones in stores, and then resell that data to store owners, so they can track who comes into their stores: http://www.getnomi.com/
I am really tempted to buy one of these but I am currently torn between this and a cheap android phone. I find myself using the "smart" features on my phone less and less mainly due to the fact I have been trying to lessen my addiction to technology and being "always connected". Ideally I would like to spend around £100. I have also been looking at the Lumia 520 but I am not too keen on Windows Phone. All I really need it for is a basic browser (I don't do much browsing on my phone), mp3 player and maps. Everything else I can live without. Firefox OS does all I need it is just the reviews of the hardware on the ZTE Open are pretty poor. Suggestions welcome :)
For what it's worth, the Windows Phone OS for me has been great (Nokia 925). The maps will be much better on the 520 than the Firefox OS Phone, and you can download them do your device so you don't have to have internet for navigation to work. The new mobile IE is fast and comparable to the others, but one thing that I don't like is that a tap doesn't count as a mousedown like it does on the built-in android browser so some menus don't work on the desktop version of some sites.
Yeah I am going to pop into Carphone Warehouse this weekend and have a good play with the 520. Visually I quite like Windows Phone but I want to try it out in person. I also need to check out the apps available for it. Obviously it is poor compared to iOS and Android but as long as it covers the few areas I need I should be happy.
this is the single worst accessibility issue on most browsers. Android is the only one who gets it right (and i guess mozilla now as well). but for microsoft and apple to still not provide this functionality is just mind blowing.
I'm also between a cheap android and this. Anyone know of any few-year-old phones that'll run 4.1? $200-250 is around what I'm hoping to pay.
EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'm a tad sketched out by the no-name chinese copies. They look good, but you have to wonder whether they go through decent QA processes and have to comply with the same safety laws as phones sold in the US.
Earlier this year I've purchased Geeksphone Peak, which was just sitting on my desk doing nothing special... Few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a tutorial on how to install Android on Peak, I did it and it works stable and great since then :) To be honest, in some situations it works better then my Galaxy S3 with stock ROM (probably my storage on s3 got slower over time, since I own it for more than 1 year)
The "no-name Chinese copies" are in many cases really good. I have a Star B92m, which is roughly a Galaxy S III copy. It is slower, and slightly different port layout (which is annoying, as otherwise it is perfect dimensions to fit all cases etc.). Apart from that the only problem is that the GPS antenna is way too short, so if GPS matters to you you pretty much need to open the phone and mod it. Other than that it's an excellent phone.
The B92m is last years model, and I bought it for about $240 at the time. This year you can get quad core full hd (1920x1080) phones for the same price.
Basically it is down to reading reviews in advance to ensure the features you care about works as they should.
Safety is really not a concern when it comes to the phone itself - if you're worried, throw away the charger and pick up any USB charger you trust more.
Overall keep in mind that most of these "copies" are only copies or imitations of better known brands on the surface - if you open them up what you tend to see is boards that are closely following the same reference boards for either MTK (Taiwanese fab-less manufacturer; one of the worlds largest semiconductor companies), Rockchip or AllWinner (Cinese mainland) CPUs.
You can pick up devices from dozens of different manufacturers and find boards that are close to (or totally) identical in most of the ones using the same SOCs. In the case of AllWinner at least, chances are the devices are designed by close partners of AllWinner - I'm assuming the same is the case for MTK and Rockchip.
The upside of this is that it's not like some random little outfit have actually designed most of the internals of most of these phones - they're largely well tested designs from well established large engineering companies. Most of them are also very simple, relying on MTK, AllWinner or Rockchip SOCs that embed most of the functionality in a single package, so the boards often just break out ports and have minor supporting circuitry which is presumably a big reason why they're so popular with this market segment.
I bought a ZTE v970 for 130 euro on pandawill. It's fast, good size and runs the latest android. You'll find loads more Chinese phones if you research well :)
Nexus 4 is only $249 for the 16G version Surely some are on craigslist or google may still be selling them directly Good phone to make custom Roms for or for building AOSP
$249 was Google's closeout price and inventory disappeared. A new Nexus 4 seems to go for $360+. eBay has used ones in various conditions and they seem to be $260+.
Maybe when the Nexus 5 ships, the resellers will lower their prices. Or just sell in countries with inflated retail prices.
I have and use the following phones iPhone 1, Nexus 4, Nokia 520, ZTE Open.
I really like the ZTE Open and am switching to it for full time use. But I'd generally advise at this stage most people would not be happy to do this. The touch screen is unresponsive, the phone is generally sluggish and the range of apps is limited. The apps that are there have limited functionality. I think it would be a much better experience built with say LuaJIT and FFI and a kernel of C routines for heavy lifting in apps. But it is what it is, and ultimately I'm a big fan of the experiment Mozilla is undertaking using Web technologies to deliver such a platform - but its going to be a long road. Part of this is also colored by my experiences developing for Android and iOS.
The reason I'm switching is that I prefer to carry a cheaper phone around, and I only need very basic services (basically happy to receive phone calls, and send texts and occasionally browse to a web page in an emergency). I am also very impressed philosophically with what Mozilla is trying to achieve here. I almost returned the Nexus 4 and Nokia 520 when I got them because it is very difficult to set them up without getting funnelled into over sharing your private information with cloud services.
My second choice of phone would be the Nokia 520 for pure value for money. But my view is only an iPhone or an Android device have first class web browsing capabilities and first class app ecosystems. Go with the Nokia 520 and its a reasonable (if simple phone), but does the basics (_except_ notification) well.
My third choice is my old iPhone 1, it does what it says on the tin. Its stuck on a very old version of iOS, but I think its fine for a phone.
My final choice is the Nexus 4. Its the best built of the phones. It has the best range of apps. Using Android feels like a real chore to me.
> I've replaced that with a firefox phone after it died
Which is far worse if you buy a ZTE open. I had a ZTE blade , no update to ICS , and the display lasted 2 month. You definetly get what you pay for but ZTE phones are crap.
Otoh the g300 was a choice between an ancient version of android or a modern one that was very sluggish.
The g300 completely died in the end, along the way it killed an sd card before completely giving up.
Im not buying huawei again.. The zte im typing this on was a third of the price and although frustrating at times, its to be expected as its quite early days.
I am a huge fan of what Mozilla is doing with FFOS. I bought a ZTE for testing and because I really believe that HTML/CSS/JS is a great choice for a phone platform.
It's a great little device. It's incredible what $80 can buy you. Having said this I don't think I would recommend it as an everyday device. The hardware is slightly underpowered and the screen resolution is too low for my taste. I think you could get a much better browsing experience by spending $50-$100 more on a different device.
I can't wait until a FFOS device in the $200-$300 range comes out. It will be amazing.
The ZTE Open is actually just a cheap Android device. Firefox OS runs on top of Android. If you don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty, the current build scripts appear to support a number of old nexus devices (galaxy-nexus, nexus-4, nexus-s, nexus-s-4g, and the galaxy-s2 among others). I have not personally installed a build I've compiled on anything other than a ZTE Open, but from what I read it's too difficult - maybe a weekend's worth of work.
Firefox OS does not run on top of Android. The Android Linux kernel is used but that is it. All the Java/Dalvik code was removed well before the initial release.
I may be splitting hairs here, but I'm fairly sure it's a bit more than just the kernel. Fastboot, and ADB function identically. The partition/imaging layout is identical, so much so that I was easily able to run CWM Recovery on my ZTE Open. On top of that the build processes are very similiar and a large number of repos that appear to be forks of AOSP are included. Perhaps there's another name for this shared part, but I just figured all a good part of the native base was borrowed from Android.
If I made it sound like Firefox OS was just a fancy application launcher, that was not my intent.
I was going to purchase this phone but apparently we have to rely on the kindness of ZTE if we're to get OS updates, or go through a complicated process much like it is for Android. This is massively disappointing for a supposedly 'open' phone and has put me off entirely.
I was using the ZTE for a month as my main phone. I got the T-Mobile $30/month Walmart plan and kept my iPhone 4 with me. Text input was okay as long as I pressed the buttons a little slower than what I'm used to on an iPhone 4. I think spell check was not yet available - or I didn't notice to turn it on so I had to spell perfectly. The map app would give me incorrect data (store/restaurant locations for Tucson Arizona) and it became annoying enough that I just relied on my iPhone for map stuff. In some rare occasions I couldn't get the phone to dial a number and that required a hard reset. Sometimes I couldn't get it to answer a call. I would press the button to answer but the phone wouldn't respond. I don't know if that's the OS problem or the ZTE not responding correctly to input.
When viewing a missed call I would see the phone number appear first and then the name of the contact replace the number. As if it takes a fraction of a second for it to match the number to the name. It did that every time and I didn't add that many contacts to my phone.
FYI I haven't updated to the most recent Firefox OS release so some of those issues might have been fixed.
More computers aimed solely at content consumers, neutered only to run web browsers, with their own NIH development environments tied down to specific languages.
> More computers aimed solely at content consumers, neutered only to run web browsers, with their own NIH development environments tied down to specific languages.
What are you talking about ? Firefox os made a choice i wish them good luck.
If you are talking about phone oses is general Android is hackable,it's not just aimed at content consumers. As for specific languages you can code in java ,c/c++,python,... or javascript with android. you are not tied to anything.
That couldn't be a less accurate description of Firefox OS.
aimed solely at content consumers: No. FxOS phones can't do as much as a Nexus 4 or iPhone, but they aren't meant to compete with those. Mozilla's targeting emerging markets where most people don't have smartphones or maybe even computers at all. At $80 unsubsidized, the ZTE Open is approaching feature-phone price and it can do a lot more than a feature phone (and will do more still once FxOS matures).
neutered only to run web browsers: It has full-fledged apps. Using web technology under the hood isn't the same as running in a browser.
NIH development environments: You can't get much less NIH than adopting the web itself, which everyone already uses and develops for, as your platform. If you look in the Firefox Marketplace, many of the apps you see now are web apps, written without FxOS in mind at all, with maybe 15-45 minutes of effort to package them for the marketplace.
tied down to specific languages: There are hundreds of languages that compile to JavaScript[1], and some, like ClojureScript, are already seeing real-world use in commercial apps[2]. With Emscripten, you can use any language that compiles to native. There are performance and debugging challenges but they're getting addressed with efforts like Asm.js and source maps. In 2013 you don't have to write JavaScript to use the web as a platform.
Call me crazy, but I see a lot of inspiration from WebOS in FxOS. As someone who went back to their Palm Pre 6 times between July of 2009 (when I first got the device) and August of 2011, I love this.
Now I just wish that Palm and Sprint would have put more into the hardware for the builds.
"To be honest I think the box achieves the goal. I do not expect FxOS to be complete. I expect it to have room for improvement and to be welcoming of my contributions. That is what FxOS needs right now, the luxury boxes can come later."
Amen. Well-written, and I hope you enjoy your new FxOS :)