
Firefox OS 2.5 Developer Preview, an Experimental Android App - thallian
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/11/firefox-os-2-5-developer-preview-an-experimental-android-app/
======
creshal
And yet my FirefoxOS phone is still stuck on 1.3, because Alcatel apparently
could not be arsed to support their "flagship" FxOS phone for a mere six
months.

Can we get an open-source mobile OS that is _not_ fragmented to the point of
uselessness?

~~~
fiatjaf
You're lucky! Mine is 1.1.

~~~
lbenes
Comments like this are why I think Google should merge Android into Chrome OS
and not the other way around. It seems that most manufactures have concluded
that offering long upgrade periods for their devices is against there best
interest. As a result I only recommend iOS and Nexus smartphones.

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akerro
On My nexus 7 it's really slow. Staring any application takes ages compared to
times that ParanoidAndroid does it. Start-up time with Foxfood is noticeably
longer than PA, actually I got bored waiting. 8 minutes and counting... It's
not possible to stop it and go back to android launcher.

There is an updater built-in. UI looks better than my Android, there is no
theme changer, so it's a no-go for me.

It provides access to applications from Android, but icons are HUGE. On N7 I
have 3 icons per row (you can change it to 4, but it's still ugly), so they're
really ugly and pixelated. Settings are pretty nice, it looks like something
between iOS and standalone Android 5.

It didn't fully replace my android UI, as the bottom bar with back, menu,
recent is still visible, but pressing back doesn't do anything, instead back
button is placed in top left. Not every application has the button, contact
settings doesn't have, so I had to restart FirefoxOS to go back to main menu.
Also I still see Android heads-up notifications from VPN reconnecting.
Doubled.

There are a few unnecessary UI-fireworks, which I would like to disable, but
can't see any settings about UI.

I think battery consumption is big as well, in several minutes of testing I
lost 11%, which normally I use 6%-10% in 1.5h.

It's good, needs a lot of polishing, and it's getting somewhere.

I listed only disadvantages here, but it looks nice, their own UI is clear and
consistent, better than android, everything what comes from FxOS runs very
smoothly. It's 7/10 for a developer preview package.

When those things improve in the future, I will be happy to replace Launcher3
with Foxfood.

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vruiz
I'm really hoping that Firefox OS will save us from a future overtaken by
walled gardens, save the mobile web that apple and google have less and less
incentives to support. But unfortunately so far adoption has been nominal from
mayor manufacturers, I understand this "trojan horse" approach even if it
seems to defeat the purpose. The world needs a mainstream open mobile device,
fingers crossed.

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akerro
Could it be pushed to F-Droid? At of people using FD as main source of apps
would like to try it.

~~~
carlos22
I don't think so. Similar to many Linux distributions F-Droid apps should be
build from source. There are some issues about the branding (logo, name etc.)
which leads to things like Iceweasel (Debian) or Fennec (F-Droid). See:
[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.fire...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.firefox)

~~~
Spittie
Beside this, Firefox is not really welcomed (and a drop is planned eventually)
on F-Droid because it's really complex to build, depends on some closed source
libraries (Google Play Services, for example) and has lots of tracking in it
(everything is at least opt-out as far as I can tell, but the guys behind
F-Droid aren't really keen on any kind of tracking it seems).

It's possible to build it without those problems (see Fennec on F-Droid in
fact), but it takes a lot of time for someone to create a recipe, and it's
prone to break on every upgrade (and that's why the last version of Fennec on
F-Droid is based on Firefox 40).

I don't know if/how many of those problems apply on Firefox OS (I guess at
least the complex build environment applies), but that's likely why you'll not
find it on F-Droid anytime soon. Unless someone decides to pour lots and lots
of energy into this.

More info/sources:

[https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.firefox](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.firefox)

[https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid)

[https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/or...](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid.txt)

~~~
akerro
Yea, I know all of that.

>It's possible to build it without those problems (see Fennec on F-Droid in
fact)

Fennec is stuck on 40 because of difficulties with building it, and even when
one person managed to build it, .apk didn't start on others developers phone.
A few people tried upgrading it to 41 and all failed, I guess fennec is kill
now. I talked about it a few times on their IRC with people responsible for
fennec.

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hajile
For the love of all things good, why didn't Mozilla adopt the webOS UI instead
of the terrible, unscalable iOS UX? Sure, webOS couldn't survive the awful
hardware designs and last-generation JITs, but the UI was the best mobile
UI/UI to date.

Even at this point, I believe there's a lot of potential that could be gained
if Mozilla worked with LG. Mozilla has the web experience and LG has the
patents and hardware ability.

I'd go for a $350-$400 LG/Mozilla phone with nexus 5 specs running a new
version of webOS in a heartbeat.

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dmichulke
It's extremely hard to find a Firefox OS device with acceptable (as in "> 512
MB RAM") specs in Europe.

I looked for months and I ended up buying a Moto G 2014 and installed
CyanogenMod (which took me ~3hs because newb).

I couldn't be happier today and I sincerely hope FirefoxOS offers its OS on
newer hardware if it ever wants to stand a chance.

~~~
alex_mayorga
[https://firefoxos.mozilla.community/device/Motorola/Moto%20G](https://firefoxos.mozilla.community/device/Motorola/Moto%20G)
;-)

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listic
Glad to see Mozilla announcing FxOS release versions, at last (previously they
didn't).

Should I be able to upgrade any FxOS device to 2.5 now?

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tacojuan
I am REALLY tempted to buy a Nexus 5 just to put FirefoxOS on it. Kinda
looking for a more reasonable phone though, also not sure how well it's
supported.

~~~
reubenmorais
I've been running Firefox OS on Android for a couple of months now on my Nexus
5 with CyanogenMod and everything works alright. As long as you have KitKat or
above things should go smoothly.

