First batch of Firefox OS phones sells out in hours
Experimental handsets a hot item among developers
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The first batch of phones based on the Mozilla Foundation's open source Firefox OS has sold out, mere hours after they were announced for sale.
As we press the big, red Publish button on this story, Geeksphone, the Spanish startup that designed and built the devices, has shut down its online store, replacing it with a notice indicating that no more handsets are available.
The site promises that sales will resume "in the following hours," but there was no indication as to just how many devices will be made available in total.
Geeksphone isn't the first company to experience such high demand for a new smartphone. For example, the Nexus 4, Google's most recent flagship Android smartphone, met with similar supply problems.
What makes the run on Geeksphone's devices so remarkable, however, is that the devices were intended for developers only, as Firefox OS is still in a fairly raw state.
"These devices are strictly for developers looking to test and create apps for Firefox OS," a Mozilla spokesman told El Reg on Monday. "These devices have not been designed for consumers and include a pre-release development version of Firefox OS."
The brisk sell-through of the devices indicates strong developer interest in Mozilla's new OS, which includes an app development model based entirely on HTML5, JavaScript, and other open web standards.
The two developer devices offered for sale included the Keon, an entry-level model with a low-resolution screen; and the Peak, a version with more generous hardware specs. Both models have reportedly sold out, at least for the time being.
Mozilla says it plans to launch consumer Firefox OS phones in 2013 in collaboration with Chinese electronics maker ZTE. The initial devices will be made available in Brazil and a yet-to-be-named Eastern European country, according to reports.
Geeksphone did not immediately respond to The Reg's request for comment. ®
COMMENTS
Highly Rated
Re: I'll wait...
I downloaded the Ubuntu Touch beta. Imho, it has a UX that makes Windows 8 look like it was designed by a genius.
I'm sure it will be good for some people, but there are far too many (well, actually everything is) hidden behind non-intuitive gestures. And in many cases the gestures are overloaded (depending on where you gesture from). Worse, some parts simply don't work because of positioning (app tray getting in the way).
I've played with the Firefox OS simulator, and whilst it's a less "powerful" OS, it's a hell of a lot more user friendly than Ubuntu Touch. I was sceptical of Firefox OS, but it looks like it will be a perfectly usable OS for the majority of people (most don't need complex apps that can't be made HTML 5).
Re: Raspberry Pi Phone
@MutatedWombat,
"A true geek would insist on a phone that was based on a real time operating system. That rules out all of the popular phones, and Windows phone as well."
Setting aside the inevitable debate about popularity, Blackberry's BB10 is based on QNX which is first and foremost a hard real time OS.
"...but for "hard" (i.e. actual) real-time performance you need to re-write Linux, which various people have done.
Indeed. The PREEMPT_RT patch set is one of the major efforts. I use it, and it's pretty good. It's a pretty hard RTOS in that the context swith times seem to be pretty stable. It's not as good as, say, VxWorks (which I've also used a lot) which was designed from the ground up for that puprpose and has lightning fast context switch times.
Still, I gather that people have applied PREEMPT_RT to various ARM Linuxes, so there's no fundamental reason why one couldn't homebrew an Android featuring it.
Once I started developing multithreaded apps for an RTOS I started bitterly regretting the fact that most operating systems aren't real time (Windows, Mac, etc). RT means that you can do a really good job on anything doing anything with media or human interaction.
Re: Raspberry Pi Phone
You seem to be letting emotion trump logic.
A true geek would insist on a phone that was based on a real time operating system. That rules out all of the popular phones, and Windows phone as well.
A practical person would insist on a phone that provided access to a huge app store. That limits the choice to iOS or Android.
Ubuntu satisfies neither the true geek nor the practical person.
Eadon FAIL.
Re: my god
@The Alpha Klutz - "im going to spunk"
The small town in Bulgaria? I've been there and I can't recommend it. There's only one restaurant, and the dessert menu is rather limited.
Do we know how many they had for sale? If they only had 10 of each model this wouldn't be such a big story...
