Spanish startup to ship first Mozilla-phones
‘Developer preview’ devices to ship in February
Mozilla has taken a small step closer to finding out whether the world wants another smartphone operating system, with Spanish startup Geeksphone (working with Telefonica) announcing developer previews of two Firefox-based devices.
Details are relatively sketchy about the two Qualcomm Snapdragon-based 3G mobiles. One, the Keon, is pitched as a lower-end device with a 3.5-inch HVGA multitouch screen, 3 megapixel camera, 4GB of ROM and 512 MB of RAM. The other, dubbed Peak, has a 4.3-inch qHD IPS multitouch screen, cameras both back and front (8 megapixel and 2 megapixel respectively with flash for the rear camera), and the same memory.
Both feature MicroSD, 802.11n, light and proximity sensors, GPS. The Keon has a 1580 mAh battery, while the Peak has a little more at 1800 mAh.
Mozilla’s Stormy Peters discusses the phones in this blog post.
The idea is to try and halt the drift towards the “vendor Web”: Mozilla want to use its Firefox OS to push back against the way smartphone vendors wrap apps around content. In the Firefox OS world, the phone’s hardware functions are accessible to HTML5.
The Keon Firefox OS phone. Are you keen to own one?
Peters says the OS allows a Website to be turned into a phone app “by making some small changes to your Website”. Firefox OS can be run as a desktop simulator or flashed onto a phone.
The Geeksphone developer devices are due to ship in February. ®
COMMENTS
Re: whether the world wants another smartphone operating system
Yes, it does - at the very least, I do (and I know I'm not alone).
More choice is good, we're not all Apple/Google/Microsoft sheep.
I was thinking of calling fake, that looks so much like an iPhone.
Still, gimme! Mozzy's way of doing things like this never ceases to appeal to me.
Count me in
Probably a lot less scummy than the competition.
Re: Count me in
In terms of HTML5 as the basis for a mobile OS you've got Intel/Samsung with Tizen and Mozilla with Firefox OS - I certainly know who I would trust the most with the future of HTML5 on mobile devices.
Intel/Samsung are guaranteed to ring fence their solution with proprietary extensions to protect themselves, and thus fuck it all it up, whereas I would trust and expect Mozilla to keep things far more open and standards compliant.
Well, why not.
I think fast judgement of "another OS for mobile" or whatever, is completely ridiculous. This still is a new area. Of course, there was a lot of ridicule behind Firefox to begin with. Many said "Does Mozilla need another browser?". Well, we see how that turned out.
Considering there is only 3 major players in the Smartphone OS market (Win, Mac, Google), a fourth is certainly welcomed. Now, when you also consider that the 3 major ones in existence are heavily commercial, then a 5th might even be welcomed (anyone working on a 5th? Ubuntu?).
Glad to see it, the area is still fresh, and just by looking at what we have now, there is certainly room for improvement. Competition could help this. Regardless, I welcome a "shake up" early on in development, better early than late at least.
Smartphone OS's have not even been popular for 10 years, yet a lot of people take area to already be a "Wrap".
