
I used Firefox OS for 30 days and it made me want to quit phones - msh
http://digitaltrends.com/mobile/firefox-os-review/
======
programminggeek
I haven't used Firefox OS, but I've wrote PhoneGap apps for iOS and Android,
and the biggest problem is just that it puts the developer experience before
the end user experience and that seems backwards to what makes a great
product.

Yes, using the same code everywhere is cool, but if it takes longer to load,
is less responsive, and has a worse experience, you have saved yourself time,
but made something worse.

I imagine it like a 3D printed plastic hammer. If I want a cheap toy for my
kids maybe it's great, but if I'm putting a new roof on my house I want a real
hammer, forged in steel, etc. You know, so that I can have the best tool for
driving nails into wood. I don't care that it would be cheaper/faster to make
a plastic hammer, I care about a tool that is great.

I know that properly executed and with enough processing power, maybe
performance is a mostly non-issue, but in my experience mobile JS dev isn't
there yet and it's not remarkably better this year than last.

I hope this Firefox OS thing works out for Mozilla, but until the perf issues
are solved, it's not going to be too exciting.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I think you're looking at it backwards: App consumers aren't interested in
well-crafted apps. Consumers treat mobile apps like "gladware": they want
cheap and disposable/replaceable. This plays very well with companies' desire
for cheap production. Hence the steady march toward the commoditization of web
app development and the "war" on native, especially in the mobile space.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I completely disagree with you. What's the evidence for this?

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I'd turn the question around: what's the evidence they want well-crafted apps
developed with native SDKs or otherwise?

I don't think there is anything like evidence (in the scientific sense) for
either position.

I do think the ratio of free to free+IAP to up-front-purchase apps supports my
contention rather than the other--people get what they pay for, and they
apparently don't want to pay very much for apps. To my mind, this means they
don't want to pay for the development effort required to sustain well-crafted
apps (or else they believe the development effort required to be either less
than what it really is or else that it's overpriced).

This is of course a generalization; as such there are exceptions.

~~~
pazimzadeh
Whether or not people want to pay for apps or not has nothing to do with
whether they desire polished apps. Most people don't know a thing about
development and the effort required to create a good app, but do seem to
appreciate quality.

I don't have good data on this either, but from personal experience here these
apps have spread like very quickly through my circle of (iPhone-using)
friends:

    
    
      Square
      Instagram
      Clear
      Snapchat
      Letterpress
    

These apps all have something in common, which is that their creators clearly
put a lot of care into their products. Most of them still manage to be free,
except for Clear.

During the Apple Maps debacle, none of my friends used Google's web app, but
many downloaded the native app as soon as it was available.

I really don't understand how you can think that "App consumers aren't
interested in well-crafted apps." If you're right, then how do you explain the
success of Apple and the developer community surrounding Apple?

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Apple's demographic and target market consists primarily of affluent consumers
(high discretionary income) who have a history of spending more than the
average consumer for products without regard to quality or functionality. They
are not representative of "most consumers" by any measure.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I mostly agreed with you until "without regard for quality or functionality."
Either way, apps are extremely inexpensive for the effort put into them
compared to say, a cup of coffee. There are also a lot of free or ad-supported
apps, which means that price is likely not the main differentiator between two
apps. And if that's true, then what else can you use to evaluate an app but
its usability?

Do you yourself value cheap and "disposable" apps more than well-crafted ones?

------
canadev
While FF OS does sound pretty bad from the descriptions in article, I'm
willing to cut it some slack.

Sounds like it should not have been released at this point, to me, but the
biggest benefit (IMO) of open-source software is that things can get patched.
And if you look at the activity on the FF browser, it can happen very fast.

This article encouraged me to clone the source code and play with it -- but
after nearly 20 years of software development I'm starting to learn that my
eyes are bigger than my stomach. Still, for anyone interested:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox_OS/Building_and_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox_OS/Building_and_installing_Firefox_OS)

Now, I would like to start hacking on the browser at some point...
[http://codefirefox.com/](http://codefirefox.com/)

In conclusion, I feel that their release process (like don't release until it
works properly) is broken, but hopefully will be fixed, and I am almost glad
that the product sucks, because it shows such room for improvement. I think
the mobile industry, and the software industry more generally, is still young.

------
wcummings
I picked one of these up because it was $80 unlocked, well w/in impulse buy
range, and anyone w/ some webdev chops can churn out an app w/o learning
[STUPID DEV STACK THAT DOESNT WORK ANYWHERE ELSE].

I wish there was some slicker FFOS hardware, but I like where the platform is
going

~~~
candl
And how is HTML any better?

This is a good example :
[http://fb.html5isready.com/](http://fb.html5isready.com/) a fairly
sophisticated facebook application in HTML. It's barely usable on my Lumia 920
(IE10), barely usable on my BlackBerry Z10 (webkit based browser) and doesn't
even render properly on a Nexus 7 2012 (Firefox). All these are pretty
powerful devices.

Doesn't look like HTML is working everywhere as people claim.

~~~
zobzu
I just go to facebook.com with firefox on the nexus 7 and it just works
waaaaaaaaay better than this website you refer.

So.. I don't think it's an HTML problem. Turns out, facebook.com also works
great on my desktop browser.

------
cleverjake
I reallllllly think this author misses the point of firefox os. it is not
meant to "take on android" it is meant to take on feature/dumb phones. People
who store their contacts on their sim card, and pay for things using SMS.

~~~
gagege
What's wrong with storing contacts on a SIM card? Seems like a good idea, just
move it to a new phone and boom, all your contacts are there.

~~~
gbl08ma
My main problem with it is the lack of enough fields to store all contact
information. If you have, for example, a person's home phone number and mobile
phone number, you end up using two entries instead of one, because last time I
checked (and at least on the SIM cards I own) the storage format is a simple
two-column list: Name-Phone. Furthermore, there are strict limits on the
amount of characters one can insert (and the character set is very limited,
too). Additionally, one can only store 250 entries or so (varies from card to
card). To sum it up in one word, for me it's very unpractical. I remember
having to use Bluetooth to transfer contacts from a old feature-phone to a new
feature-phone because, obviously, the SIM card would not hold all the contact
information I had in the old phone.

We certainly have the technology to make better cards with more storage (BTW,
the space for SMS text storage on the cards I own is ridiculously small, too).
But as people moved on to store information on "rich" contact systems and,
more recently, in the cloud, I think there isn't much motivation to innovate
in that area.

~~~
gagege
Interesting. I didn't know they had those limitations. Better off with regular
SD card backups then.

------
sergiotapia
At this point I don't care! I'm rooting for Mozilla as they are most
definitely the company I trust more than any other in the world. They are
really transparent and it has the community support Google _wishes_ it had.

I really hope it catches on with the years. I'm still bitter that I can only
use Objective-C to make iPhone apps. I mean, objective-c!?

------
jfoster
People wrote this type of article about Android when the first Android phone
had come out. Mozilla can definitely salvage this and it's natural that it
would take more iteration before they arrive at a really good user experience.

I think the big problem Mozilla face is that they haven't been left much of an
opening by Android. Even if they offer a wonderful user experience, why would
anyone prefer a Firefox phone over an Android phone?

~~~
andrewflnr
Because it's a third or less of the cost of an Android.

~~~
msh
You can get a Chinese android phone for 80usd

------
null_ptr
Reading this made me realize what a thick skin you need to put your work out
there and not be phased by such negativity. It's also a reminder about the
high degree of entitlement software development outsiders have.

------
soapdog
Disclaimer: I am a Mozilla Rep volunteering with Firefox OS stuff.

Let me address some misconceptions in this article and why I think it is
misguided but first lets be sure that we're all on the same page and that
people are entitled to their own opinion, even if we disagree.

Firefox OS is not made to fight mid-range and high-end Android devices.
Firefox OS was created with the following main objectives:

\- Create a Free and Open mobile source operating that is developed in the
open. Android does not fit this bill because Google only release Android
source code once the job is done and is not keen on accepting contributions
from third-party. Firefox OS is on github from day one and everyone is
encouraged to contribute.

\- Create a system based on web technologies where using nothing but
HTML/CSS/JS you can access all phone features. The mobile ecosystem was
becoming a closed market where each vendor had their own proprietary system
and walled garden. Firefox OS is open and use open standards for development.
Apps made for Firefox OS can be used in other systems with minimal fiddling.

\- Create devices that were cheaper than the usual low-end Android device. The
market is not the U.S. the market is Latin America, East Europe, Asia where
people don't have the same budgets as U.S. In Brazil an iPhone costs USD 1000
at least where Firefox OS costs about USD 80 without contract. The Moto G
device quoted on the article costs about USD 350 here.

Now with this objective in mind, lets review some parts of this article.

The phone does not have two marketplaces. There is the adaptative search that
displays web apps based on a search query. You can use those apps once (open
the page) or save them (add a link to them) to the launcher. The Firefox
Marketplace will provide you with apps. Saying that the adaptative search is a
marketplace is saying that because Google Now can search the web it rivals
Google Play.

On the current version of Firefox OS being shipped you can add contacts from
SIM Card, Facebook and GMail. There are apps on the marketplace to import
vCards and other contact sources.

You can add email accounts from many popular providers and from scratch using
IMAP or POP. There is an issue with self signed certificates meaning that on
some special cases, people hosting their own email can't add the server
because the certificate is not recognized. This is being addressed in the
open.

Apps are made by their developers, not by Mozilla. If the Twitter or Facebook
app does not work as well as it should is because those developers are not
doing the necessary effort. When I say necessary effort is because its so damn
simple to pick a mobile web site and just add it as an app that some
developers forget to optmize the experience to be more app like with things
such as appcache. The Twitter app when first launched was pretty bad, these
days after some updates it became quite decent. The Facebook app still
basically their mobile web version and has a lot of room for improvement.
Anyway, this is responsability of the developers.

The fact that there are apps that the author considers embarrassing is a good
thing, it proves how easy it is to develop for the system. Do an exercise,
imagine if the world wide web instead of using HTML/CSS/JS used 6502 Assembly
language and that to code for it you would need to do it in that language. How
many web developers we would have? How open and accessible the web would be?
One of the cool things about the web is that it is really easy to cook
something that is usable. To build great experiences in the web requires a lot
of knowledge but to build something that works it is quite easy. Because of
this Firefox OS is approachable by hackers and new developers alike and this
is reflected in the current marketplace. Another thing is that Mozilla doesn't
charge you anything to be able to place apps in the marketplace and there is
no SDK or special computer/OS (Apple I am looking at you) required to build
apps for Firefox OS. Anyone can do it. This is good, democratic and pays well
in the long run, just look how popular the web is today.

Nokia Here maps has navigation. Also, criticism about Here maps should not be
directed at Firefox OS. Its like blaming Mac OS X for the lack of triple A
games.

There is no fragmentation in Firefox OS. Just like you can browse the web in
Firefox 25 or Chrome or Firefox 18. You can use the apps in different versions
of the OS. The companies that build Firefox OS are required by contract not to
wait more than six months before updating the phones. This means that in the
worst case scenario, it updates at double speed than the usual competitors
that have yearly updates. The vendors are updating it more quickly though. It
took just some months from Firefox OS 1.0 to 1.1. Also Firefox OS is divided
in three components (gonk, gecko, gaia) and updating Gaia is pretty easy.

Anyway. The article missed the point which is an open system for a cheap
device aimed at emerging markets. This is not a competitor to iPhone 5 or
Galaxy S4. The main competition is dumb phones and very low end Android
devices that have crap performance.

~~~
wodenokoto
You miss understood a lot of the points in this review.

* Low-end smart-phone should not do basic things such as calling and texting worse than a low-end feature phone (dumb phones). Author is pining for his old, low-end feature phone after using ZTE Open

* While adaptive search may not be a market place, if it looks like one to the user, then it will be percieved like one and confuse the user.

* Platform ecosystem is a valid critiscism. The main criticism of windows mobile is lack of apps. While that is not the systems fault, MS are being active in improving this, since they know that this is the main feature of a modern smart phone. If Mozilla don't realize this either, they are in trouble. It may not be ffOS's fault that the twitter app is bad, by users don't want it if it doesn't have a good twitter app.

* Critiscism of here maps should be directed at ffOS. Other maps exists, mozilla has strong ties with Google, Mozilla chose this one as default. Also see above. My limited experience with here maps from windows mobile showed me a great service, so maybe the author is off on this one.

I don't know what the feature phone market looks like in Brazil, but if its
anything like the Chinese, then it doesn't sound like the ZTE Open beats the
feature phone market.

I was getting a ffOS phone for christmas, until I realized that the only one
available to me is a ZTE Open. It really does look like a crappy
representative for ffOS, but if this is what Mozilla and ZTE decided on, then
the software side should run more than decently.

~~~
soapdog
Thanks for the feedback, let me be clear about some things from your message:

> * Low-end smart-phone should not do basic things such as calling and texting
> worse than a low-end feature phone (dumb phones). Author is pining for his
> old, low-end feature phone after using ZTE Open

Basic phone stuff such as calling, texting work pretty well. These are common
things that all phones do well right now.

> * While adaptive search may not be a market place, if it looks like one to
> the user, then it will be percieved like one and confuse the user.

Adaptative search does not look like a marketplace, it looks like a search
engine. There is a marketplace icon that launches the marketplace app which
has a experience similar to other app stores. Bonus point: Our app store is
open source, you can fork it and create your own.

> * Platform ecosystem is a valid critiscism. The main criticism of windows
> mobile is lack of apps. While that is not the systems fault, MS are being
> active in improving this, since they know that this is the main feature of a
> modern smart phone. If Mozilla don't realize this either, they are in
> trouble. It may not be ffOS's fault that the twitter app is bad, by users
> don't want it if it doesn't have a good twitter app.

Mozilla has paid staff and volunteers working on making the experiences
better. Lots of the vendors are listening and improving. Remember this
platform is on its first year and yet we're moving very fast.

> * Critiscism of here maps should be directed at ffOS. Other maps exists,
> mozilla has strong ties with Google, Mozilla chose this one as default. Also
> see above. My limited experience with here maps from windows mobile showed
> me a great service, so maybe the author is off on this one.

Here Maps is also going thru updates and is working better than before. Its a
good map. I like the offline saving of maps, makes me use less internet.

> I don't know what the feature phone market looks like in Brazil, but if its
> anything like the Chinese, then it doesn't sound like the ZTE Open beats the
> feature phone market.

We don't have the ZTE open in here, we have the Alcatel One Touch Fire and the
LG Fireweb. They are all similar. They perform better than the feature phones.
Our main difficulty right now is the lack of apps (its getting better) and the
quality of some apps (its also getting better).

> I was getting a ffOS phone for christmas, until I realized that the only one
> available to me is a ZTE Open. It really does look like a crappy
> representative for ffOS, but if this is what Mozilla and ZTE decided on,
> then the software side should run more than decently.

The ZTE is a cool phone but it is a low end device, you can't compare it with
a heavily subsided phone such as the moto g. They have different purposes.

One thing that some people often doesn't realize is that Mozilla launched an
open system with at least 4 hardware partners and 18 carriers this year. A
system that promotes open standards and freedom from a community that values
your privacy. Mozilla doesn't operate to generate profit and answers to no one
but the users. This is a system made by people that have the same values as we
do and we're moving fast.

~~~
cpleppert
> Adaptative search does not look like a marketplace, it looks like a search
> engine. There is a marketplace icon that launches the marketplace app which
> has a experience similar to other app stores.

The reviewer was probably right to be confused as it isn't clear from basic
descriptions of the OS exactly how it works. Instead, there is buzzword fluff
(HTML5! HTML5!) and marketing jargon about the 'web'. I am very technical and
I still am not clear about how firefox os applications work. Are there
additional APIs available to applications from the marketplace? Are
applications downloaded by the launcher or does every application act like a
web link, or is there a combination of the two?

~~~
soapdog
There are additional APIs available to all applications. They don't need to
come from the marketplace to use such APIs. An application can use the "Open
Web Apps API" to install itself onto the phone (with the user permission)
bypassing the marketplace. So you can distribute your own apps on third party
marketplaces or on your own web page.

There are two types of applications: Hosted and Packaged. Hosted apps are
normal web pages that you host somewhere and access from the device. If you
use appcache and responsive design, they will provide an experience like what
native apps provide in other platforms. The packaged apps instead of being
hosted are packaged and offered on the marketplace. Its basically a zipfile
with your HTML/CSS/JS, when it is installed this zipfile is copied to the
device and sandboxed.

There are three security levels. Plain, Privileged and Certified. These
security levels govern what APIs your app can access. Hosted apps are always
plain apps. Packaged apps can be plain apps too but they can also be
privileged apps that can access an extra set of APIs or certified apps that
can access every API on the device. Only Mozilla and its hardware partners can
build and deploy certified apps due to security reasons (you don't want an app
with the ability to send SMS or make calls without user interaction).

So in summary, you can have plain web links in the launcher and you can have
links to packaged apps that are actually on the device. Both things are
possible and indistinguishable from a user point of view. Both solutions work
offline if you use appcache with the hosted app.

If you want to know more, I've written a Free and Open eBook about it called
"Firefox OS Development Quick Guide" available at
[http://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment/](http://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment/)
you can also hop by Mozilla Developer Network portal for Firefox OS at
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox_OS](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS)

=)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Given that the post we're all discussing is from someone who is ostensibly
pretty savvy about these things, I think it might behoove the folks working on
Firefox OS to rethink aspects of the platform user experience.

------
dserban
Firefox OS isn't aimed at Android, as the article implies. I don't think it's
even meant to be aimed at something, not even at dumbphones.

The intent is to provide a fallback digital-freedom option, should any of the
mobile players ever start to exhibit monopolistic tendencies.

Firefox OS is a hedge that Mozilla is building for us.

------
zobzu
tldr: user expected 3y old phone hardware and from-scratch OS to beat
Android/iOS on quad core devices, got disappointed.

------
elktea
> Surprisingly, given the ZTE Open’s wheezing 1GHz single-core processor and
> the feeble 256MB of RAM, [Cut the rope] didn’t choke and was perfectly
> playable.

In what world would a modern 1GHz processor have any issues with a simple 2D
game running at a low resolution?

------
fidotron
Firefox OS remains highly unlikely to go anywhere with the current direction.
They need a rethink, fairly fast, as Android has got the "we're not iOS"
market sewn up at this point. (MS are about the only group left with any hope
whatsoever, and that's fairly slim). As has been repeatedly demonstrated web
technology based operating systems simply don't run well on mobile, especially
if (like FFOS) you haven't got completely GPU accelerated graphics, which is a
slight problem on lower res screens like the Open, but is completely essential
for anything in the 720p or greater territory.

Chasing Chrome OS in netbook land would be enormously more entertaining, and
far more likely to actually get some traction, especially with the recent
negative noise about any cloud services.

------
rimantas
I just saw instructions how to upgrade to 1.1 and it became clear how far away
from prime-time Firefox OS is.

~~~
soapdog
FirefoxOS consumer phones upgrade over the air just like Android and iOS
devices. The developer preview phones are unlocked so the developer can opt to
update by hand from his own copy of Firefox OS.

------
dpcan
I had a similar experience, only I really enjoyed the OS, but the hardware was
completely unusable for me and how I use my phone, which is more like a
computer than a phone.

I was so frustrated with how slow everything was that I just had to go back to
my old phone (which at the time was a Windows Phone 7 - go figure). I really
think that FFOS on really fast hardware would be awesome. The phone &
experience actually reminded me of my old G1, but at that time, there wasn't
much to go back to until I got the iPhone 3GS :)

------
IlPeach
I've bought the ZTE Open through a friend of mine from Spain.

As other have said the article is a bit biased and it doesn't stand the
comparison with Android or anything really. It's a very young OS (remember the
first few versions of Android?).

But, this said, my biggest gripe is the touch screen of the device in
question. I really thought there would have been better touch screens
available for that price. Bummer.

------
ksec
As Far as i am concern, Mozilla has never been great ( or even good ) with
User Experience. So it is no surprise all those time they wasted on Firefox OS
didn't bring any major ground breaking achievement.

However I do admire them to continue working on "Open Web". Open Codec etc.
Sometimes I just wish they could be more realistic.

------
tluyben2
Flashbacks from when I got a Lumia because I thought I needed to try it. After
trying to like it, I tried to avoid using the thing at all for anything and I
reverted back to my S2 after a few weeks. My wife had the same reaction and
got an iPhone. I use the Lumia to build apps solely now; outside that it's
switched off.

------
dubcanada
Dude, it's not even a "released" phone yet, what you have is a dev version at
best.

~~~
randomchars
If it's sold in stores and featured in advertisements, it is released.

------
xkarga00
How about the Alcatel OneTouch Fire? Has anyone got his/her hands on it?

~~~
jbeja
It has the same spec so is pretty much the same, but with a different look and
slightly bigger screen

------
shmerl
Try Sailfish.

------
bluekitten
The author seems miss the point in the comparison to the Moto G's price, since
ZTE does not have a ~$50B search business to subsidize its phone
business(Motorola's been losing money at a fast clip) and needs to make money
on every phone it sells, it's not really a valid comparison. Android phones in
the < $150 price range are quite slow too.

That said, it seems to be underperforming other OSes. I remember WebOS on my
HP Touchpad had issues with scroll and lagging even on a dual core 1.5GHz
processor.

Anyone know how the CPU in the ZTE Open(single core Cortex A5 at 1GHz)
compares to the Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon CPU Cortex-A5 in the Lumia 510(A
WP7 phone)? Both have the same GPU(Adreno 200) and 256MB RAM, but the 510
doesn't seem to have that many issues with lag despite the ZTE Open being
clocked 25% higher.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDZQuEn2mMM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDZQuEn2mMM)

~~~
eropple
_> The author seems miss the point in the comparison to the Moto G's price,
since ZTE does not have a ~$50B search business to subsidize its phone
business(Motorola's been losing money at a fast clip) and needs to make money
on every phone it sells, it's not really a valid comparison._

It's an eminently valid comparison because the Moto G exists and is sold for
$179. Sure, they have advantages that let them do that. No consumer cares.
(Few developers care.)

