
Firefox OS puts a good $50 smartphone within reach - cpeterso
http://www.zdnet.com/firefox-os-puts-a-good-50-smartphone-within-reach-7000015212/
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ux-app
I have a feeling Firefox OS is going to be big. from what I've seen of YouTube
demos the OS is quite responsive on modest hardware (gs2 and nexus s).

I've had no luck this week trying to build the OS for a gs2. I'm hopeful that
I'll have more success compiling for a nexus s.

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binarymax
Yes, I think so too. There was a big gap left open when WebOS was mercilessly
killed off by HP, and I really wanted to see WebOS succeed.

Firefox OS is great so far, it has its quirks but its still very early days.
There is no question in my mind that it will be a serious contender. There are
so many devs out there who just want to code for one platform (web) and cant
be bothered to go native (ask anyone using phonegap or sencha)...so a giant
influx of good apps is not far off. And best of all, its built to open
standards with no walled garden.

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rimantas
Actually not one went native after trying out phonegap. It would be
interesting if you could elaborate more about the reasons for "giant influx of
good apps". Not coding for one platform cannot be a reasonf for that, even the
opposite. Cross-platform apps are usually aliens on all supported platforms.
Open standards and no walled garden do not imply the quality in any way. For
infrascturcure things, sure. For apps… I cannot come up with one example where
open source (desktop) app is better than commercial alternative.

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netcan
Whether the driving force is Firefox OS, Android, Windows, hardware components
or a combination of everything, I am hopeful about the idea of a good $50
smartphone.

I had a conversation with someone about a year ago that made an impact on me.
In terms of penetrating down the income ladder to those with the lowest income
in the least developed places, mobile phones may have gone farther than
anything else. Basic technology like electricity, cars/buses/trains, plumbing,
sewage, roads.. These things penetrate down to the lowest 20-30 percentiles or
so. Very few things make it farther down.

Mobile phones, made it farther down the income ladder in ten years than some
technologies have regardless in thousands of ears. Around 95, mobile phones
were for wall street yuppies. By 2005 subsistence farmers in failed states
have access to them.

Smartphones tablets are similar enough to follow the same path path. Mobile
phones shave had a big effect on the worlds poorest. Think of what access to
the internet could do.

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doe88
Interesting, I think I'm interrested in getting one of these devices [1]. I'm
wondering though if there are currently the only (preview) devices supporting
Firefox OS? And if there are officially supported by Mozilla and will continue
to officialy receive software updates in the near future? (I don't want to buy
a device useless in 4 months).

[1] <http://www.geeksphone.com/>

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cji
Mozilla has a list of supported devices ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/Firefox_OS_build_prerequisites)), with the
geeksphone devices being in Tier 1 support, and a couple of Android phones in
Tier 2/3.

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doe88
Thanks for the link it's very helpful.

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bcl
I'm more interested in what this will do for mobile app development than the
actual phone itself. Having a phone that anyone with a text editor can write
software for is going to be huge.

I briefly played with a FirefoxOS Phone at Linuxfest Northwest and it was more
responsive than my old Motorola X2. I ran a few of the pre-installed apps and
took a picture with the camera and it worked as expected.

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adcoelho
I am really looking forward to the impact that Firefox OS is going to have in
the mobile market. There is definitely still space for a highly-featured low-
priced smartphone and the HTML only is a plus for those not willing to put the
time in learning how to program for Android or iOS, giving it a small edge
apps-wise.

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kokey
Interesting, and I'm hopeful. Though I'm not so sure about what he's saying
about Android phones from China. I've bought some cheap Chinese 'smartphones'
before and they were unusably bad. Perhaps there are better, Android based,
models around nowadays.

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gizzlon
What did you buy? And from where?

Just looked at dx.com and they have a lot.. but not too many with android 4

~~~
kokey
I bought a few iPhone clones, dual sim, basic java app support. This was
before Android really took off, hence why I'm curious.

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mtgx
We'll see how "good" it is. I'm very skeptical about a Javascript-heavy OS
being as good as an Android one on the same hardware. If all things are equal,
it shouldn't be. However, I suppose Firefox OS will be more "feature-free" in
the beginning, and those HTML5 apps will be a lot simpler than the typical
native app, and these two things might compensate for the slower speed of
Javascript. We'll see.

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markokocic
Well, Dalvik is not a speed deamon. I don't have any benchmarks on actual
phone hardware available, but I can guess that javascript code will not run
much slower on phone hardware than on desktop comparable desktop browsers,
while Dalvik is a waaay slover than regular Java code on desktop.

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yareally
If going by the stats that Xamarin gave[1] for Dalvik versus Mono on Android
4.0, Dalvik is also much slower than Mono. Though obviously Xamarin is not the
most independent source in the findings, but I would believe it to outperform
Dalvik in my own uses of both it and Dalvik for Android apps (I bought a
license for it 6 months ago).

There's also some results by Koush Dutta[1] (Cyanogenmod contributer and
Clockwork Recovery developer) from 2009 showing similar findings, though
obviously that's way old and before Dalvik had JIT added in Android 2.2. We
had a discussion sometime ago about that article on hn as well[3]

[1] <http://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/>

[2] <http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/dalvik-vs-mono.html>

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=421862>

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wcchandler
It'll be interesting to see how these "alternative" OSes perform in developing
countries -- namely, those in Africa. I'm just glad to see the GPL being able
to help harbor an emerging product without shooting themselves in the foot.
They're providing third party compatibility, while still trying to tackle a
completely different market. It's quite wonderful to see.

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Ziomislaw
its MPL. not that GPL crap

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BadCRC
where does it say that the phone will retail for $50? The author implies it
and refers to the phone as though he was actually able to obtain one for about
$50..

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elliottkember
I tried one of these phones last week. It was awful. No innovation,
slow/juddery animations, bad UX. Granted it's a developer preview, but based
on the preview I wouldn't develop for it.

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kevingadd
How does it compare to the $100 retail iPhones and Android phones you've used?

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Samuel_Michon
Even if you buy a cheap plane ticket from Ryanair, you’re allowed to complain
if only one of the two engines work.

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dspillett
He may have been asking a genuine question. Given the current thread is about
how much you can do for very little money, comparing how a $100 Firefox OS
device to a $100 Android one is perfectly valid (though not entirely fair as
one of the two is still not officially production ready).

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Samuel_Michon
I don’t see how it could be anything but snark, as there are no unsubsidized
$100 iPhones.

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dspillett
Fair enough, I somehow completely missed the significance of iPhone in the
sentence and took it as smartphones in general (of which all the cheap ones
are either Android or not-quite-as-smart-phones running something older).

But the cheap Firefox OS device to cheap Android device is still a valid
comparison that I for one would be interested to see played out.

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esalman
Both phones are out of stock in the online shop.

