Trying to shoehorn a performance hungry HTML5 OS on low-end phones was a complete waste of time. Just read this review of the $35 Firefox phone [1]: it's completely unusable to the point that even typing is difficult. What an embarrassment.
I bought the mid-spec Flame developer device out of curiosity, and it's not much better. Everything feels slow, sluggish and unresponsive. Even Android 2.x was better.
My quad-core i7 desktop still occasionally struggles to render the latest and greatest HTML5 stuff at 60 fps. How on earth do they expect a phone to do the same?
Android 2.x was not better than Firefox OS 2.x IMHO. I have them all here and I really enjoy the Flame running 2.x, it was my primary smartphone until February.
One don't need HTML5 at 60fps. One need HTML5 apps that work. Movies are not 60fps. The only place where you need 60fps is games and that type of game is not the objective of the devices you've seen running Firefox OS.
What is needed is quality HTML5 apps. The old Pre2 and Pre3 webOS devices had some pretty amazing HTML5 apps. The usability was great even if the phone slowed sometimes. UX is better than FPS. Usability trumps benchmarks.
The problem is when you code for the high-end place of the spectrum with evergreen browsers and stuff and try to shoehorn that into a phone. thats when misery happens.
Instead of reading a review from written by someone used to high-end devices and ubiquitous networking. Look for those people in India and South America who are buying Firefox OS devices as their first smartphone because they couldn't afford a higher-end device. Look for their feedback. Many are accessing the web on a personal device for the first time. Its a life transforming opportunity once the doors to the vast knowledge repository of the web is open. I can go on for hours on where Firefox OS shines but I will not bore you. Just don't try to compare it against Android and iOS devices, that was never the objective.
> One don't need HTML5 at 60fps. The only place where you need 60fps is games and that type of game is not the objective of the devices you've seen running Firefox OS.
Smooth response is absolutely essential for touch usability. Without it, you can not have any sort of precision on an already imprecise input method. To achieve this, you really do need to near 60 frames per second.
When the simplest list (let alone a complex web page) constantly trails behind your finger and has to catch up with rendering, it becomes very difficult to find what you're looking for. It's crucial that what happens on screen is connected to what you're doing, or you have to constantly try and consciously correct for the software that just can't keep up.
A budget phone doesn't need to match the latest and greatest iPhone 6 in smoothness, but there is a baseline performance that has to be met for usability.
> Many are accessing the web on a personal device for the first time... just don't try to compare it against Android and iOS devices, that was never the objective.
If you actually read the review I linked, it turns out the $35 phone is practically worthless for any web browsing or just about anything. And once you go past that price point, FxOS has competition. Android One and low-end OEM's like Micromax already provide devices that are years ahead in performance, usability and functionality.
> Smooth response is absolutely essential for touch usability. Without it, you can not have any sort of precision on an already imprecise input method. To achieve this, you really do need to near 60 frames per second.
I would love to see mobile devices that are not touch based. Touch requires a very high premium on performance. Buttons would have worked wonders. For a FirefoxOS phone where it is Gen 1, the start should have been a button phone and every developer would be required to create an interface that would work well with buttons.
Yes, I personally would love to get back to having real tactile buttons. It feels sort of crazy that your only choice any more is a touch screen--I think there might be a market in higher end devices without a touch screen too.
I'd use that thing a lot more, if the applications were usable. I don't care about 'smooth', neither fancy. My constant complains are the keyboard, the lack of push support, the lack of a decent mail client (which .. needs push support. And server-side searches!) etc. are the real issues. Heck, even browsing is bad on a FxOS device.
I don't think it's the paradigm that is to blame here. The problem is the state of things, not the foundation as far as I'm concerned.
(Was a WebOS fan myself. That stuff was amazing for its time)
> UX is better than FPS. Usability trumps benchmarks.
fps is part of UX. Your comment is akin to saying that when typesetting a book, the font size doesn't matter, the paper quality does. Each element is important and pretending that they are mutually exclusive makes no sense.
The only conclusion I can draw from your comment is that you have never done user or A/B testing with sub 30fps apps. Having a sub 30fps app means that your app is literally half as responsive as the vast majority of smart phone and desktop software, and the user can always, always tell. They won't use the words "frames per second", but what they will say is "Your app feels slow." Try scrolling down a list of items on a Firefox OS vs a iPhone 6 and tell me which one has the better UX.
fps is not a part of UX for all apps. Usability needs to take into consideration the hardware features available. If you're running on 1 ARM CPU with 128mb of RAM with no graphics hardware acceleration whatsoever and you need to present hundreds items to the user such as a contact list and you know the hardware can't cope with scrolling large tall DOM elemements then you opt to use some flyweight pattern or you simply paginate the damn thing. Don't do the scrolling, offer another way to peruse the data. You can't approach low-spec hardware with UX and solutions from high-end devices. Remember progressive enhancement.
Also the phrase:
Try scrolling down a list of items on a Firefox OS vs a iPhone 6 and tell me which one has the better UX.
Is silly. Firefox OS was not created to compete with the iPhone. We're talking about low-specs in here. If you're making this comparison then I would suggest that you look on the objectives of Firefox OS and the devices available. They are not similar to iPhone.
The fact that people think that the epitome of UX is "fast scrolling lists" or fps shows what is wrong with this industry. UX is how you get a positive user experience given the constraints you have and not how to squeeze every single fps out of every single computing core.
If you're in a low-spec device, you restrict animation and scrolling tall elements. You pre-cache and pre-render whatever you can. You find another UI scheme to use besides "hamburger menu + scrolling tall thing". Don't mix fps to how responsive your app is. fps is how fast it can blit stuff to screen, thats not the same as how fast it can handle user input. The A/B Testing helps with creating the UI for low-specs.
I'm halfway through the article, and I have to say, I've never read a more brutal review.
> The other really weird thing missing is any kind of battery backup for the time. If the phone loses power, the time and date gets reset, leaving it looking like an old VCR blinking "12:00."
This seems insane for a device released just a few months ago... when you can get a lumia, which is very reasonable, for just 5$ more, why would anyone bother with this?
Sadly, they aren't really living up to that point.
Firefox OS works basically like AOSP - it's up to vendor to provide you unlocked environment (or not). It's not even on a requirement list when you want to market your device using Firefox OS brand. Phones like ZTE Open often came with blocked bootloader you had to "jailbreak" to upgrade FxOS by yourself - seems familiar, doesn't it?
Some time ago I tried to compile Firefox OS to GTA04 - a hardware upgrade for Openmoko Neo Freerunner. It's pretty much the most open mobile phone out there these days, allowing you to run basically any GNU/Linux distro you'd want on it. I failed - available documentation is lacking; or actually, it focuses on something completely different. It assumes that you either have a Android phone and goes to great extent describing how to extract non-free binary blobs from your current system and apply them to FxOS, or you have a great knowledge of Android build system and you can handle everything by yourself. GTA04 isn't Android based - while there is Replicant build working on it, it's still closer to standard PC way than Android phones when it comes to stuff like booting etc. Not having much experience with Android from developer side, I simply got lost in all those clearly Android-based instructions.
You'd at least think that Gonk, the hardware abstraction layer of Firefox OS implemented on top of Android base system, would be just a compatibility measure for dealing with vendors that only provide Android support. It's not the case - even though Honk (a Gonk reimplementation based on standard GNU/Unix way of how systems work) exists, it was contributed as a part of experimental Raspberry Pi port and is not really maintained ever since. It makes me sad, cause Firefox OS had the potential to actually move smartphones in general towards being a little more open platforms, which is always close to my heart as a long-time Openmoko and OpenPhoenux supporter and contributor, but sadly this aspect got basically ignored by Mozilla itself and they went with pragmatic "let's just make it work, even if it means having non-free low-level androidware under our free OS layer" :(
The main thing is that Mozilla does not have an free and open RIL to use.
Also Firefox OS is a partnership with hardware vendors and folks such as ZTE, LG, TCL don't see value in opening the bootloader. The baseband providers don't see value in opening the RIL... and so it goes.
Where it comes to Android, there is already Hayes-RIL for AT based basebands.
There are of course also freesmartphone.org's fsogsmd and oFono. You could probably develop an Android layer on top of them if you wanted, bringing great value not just to Firefox OS, but also to AOSP itself.
A web browser is basic table stakes for a smart phone. In many people's minds that's the basic difference between a dumb phone and a smart phone: a dumb phone has a limited web browser.
So Firefox OS has an advantage over it's competitors at the low end: it's competitors have to run their windowing system and a browser simultaneously; Firefox OS only has to run the browser.
This may very well be true, but completely ignores the context:
1. As far as the effect of the window manager: this isn't emacs+X11 in 1995: the drag on CPU/ram/battery of gecko/blink will dwarf the "weight" of the windowing system.
2. FirefoxOS maybe be leaner in principle, but the competition has vastly better hardware, both in the Windows Phone field and in the Android one, via what I can guess is a combination of subsidies (is mobile MS still burning piles of cash or has the division posted some profits?) and sheer mass scale production. So, for little more money you get a get a better device that actually runs all the apps that your friends have, and a web browser.
3. The appeal of FirefoxOS even in those low end markets was negligible (this has been discussed to death). Besides they released phones in places such as Italy and Spain, two markets were people will en masse shell out the cash for an Iphone. I found that simply baffling.
1. As far as the effect of the window manager: this isn't emacs+X11 in 1995: the drag on CPU/ram/battery of gecko/blink will dwarf the "weight" of the windowing system.
Firefox OS can actually run on a 1 ARM CPU with as low as 128mb. It may not be the best experience but Android and WP can't even boot given those constraints. Firefox OS can be really nimble, the main issue when people complain about performance is usually a poorly implemented app and not the OS.
2. FirefoxOS maybe be leaner in principle, but the competition has vastly better hardware, both in the Windows Phone field and in the Android one, via what I can guess is a combination of subsidies (is mobile MS still burning piles of cash or has the division posted some profits?) and sheer mass scale production. So, for little more money you get a get a better device that actually runs all the apps that your friends have, and a web browser.
That is true for some places but not everywhere. There are places where all the devices are imported and heavily taxed. In these cases Firefox OS tends to be a lot cheaper than a comparable Android. Some people can't afford an Android device, they may be stuck with dumb phones, in these cases, Firefox OS is an appealing solution. Thats the original case, migrating people to their first smartphone and give them web access.
3. The appeal of FirefoxOS even in those low end markets was negligible (this has been discussed to death). Besides they released phones in places such as Italy and Spain, two markets were people will en masse shell out the cash for an Iphone. I found that simply baffling.
I will not comment on the negligible part of your comment because I know people from those locations, real people not data points in a graph, who were delighted to have their first device. Also remember that Firefox OS is a partnership with hardware makers and carriers. The carriers decide where it will launch and both TIM and Telefonica wanted to launch on their home country. It was their decision, we may not agree, but its their call to launch on their home base.
On the first point I was specifically arguing on window management, e.g. the fact that FirefoxOS does not use surfacefinger is, as far as I can tell, minor, compared to the applications wonderful capacity to lock everything on just about every OS. FirefoxOS can indeed boot on 128MB (so the problem with Android is not really the kernel nor bionic), but if the applications do run poorly, what good does that make (yes, it does make some good, my previous post was overly cynical). My (admittely brief) experience with a FirefoxOS device with 256MB was precisely that surfing the web was quite frustrating.
On the second and the third point I'll both agree with you and continue disagreeing. Yes, in some places a FirefoxOS is the only option. And yes, negligible is was a dickish term. But I was specifically talking about points on a graph. This doesn't make the project worthless (as I guess my post made it sound), but, IMHO, also means that the result will not fundamentally change the trajectory of the web and of the mobile market. One can obviously reply that giving someone their first smartphone should be enough, and that is a perfectly tenable position.
On the specific example of those two countries, I'll happily take back my complaint.
One thing to keep in mind is that Mozilla is not a company, it has no shareholders, it doesn't need to do anything besides fulfilling its mission (while trying to be sustainable) so even if the data points on the graph are not as pleasant as we wish them to be, the fact that some people are joining the web for the first time is an important objective for Mozilla. We can't look at Mozilla progress and decisions through the same lens as we look at Apple and Google and Microsoft. They all operate in the same space (the web) but the objectives and means are different.
Unfortunately there is a flaw in this design of Firefox OS. By baking the rendering engine into the core OS, it is impossible to upgrade the browser separately from the rest of the system. So updating Firefox (the browser) requires a firmware update, and we all know how terrible manufacturers and carriers are at pushing out updates. The result is that all Firefox OS devices currently available are running old and insecure browsers.
> The reason for this is because gecko determines how the user interface
> (implemented in the gaia layer) actually behaves. There may be bugs in future
> versions of gecko that break parts of the UI, and the carriers/manufacturers
> understandably don't want to just push these updates without verifying them
> first.
My experience is out of date, but I'm a little surprised to hear this. I have a Geeksphone Keon that I played with for a lot of 2013, and it wasn't half bad.
Ironically my biggest complaint was that web browsing would bog down on pages with a lot of content... and I think that might have been a memory thing. Most of the phone/app stuff seemed fine (except the maps application, which was nigh unusable for me, not sure if that was CPU bound, memory bound, bandwidth bound, or just the wrong mapping service).
Lots of "content" more like it. Best i can tell, JS can be a serious memory hog. And high "content" sites invariably come with trackers tracking trackers tracking trackers.
It's not a complete waste of time because you can see where the performance is impacted. I'm sure they gathered valuable performance metrics.
Obviously to gather more customers and to get people to believe in the product you need a higher-end phone. They wanted to avoid competing directly with iPhone or Android.
Happened to Windows RT, IIRC Office suffered heavy input lag. Man seriously, a Duron with 64MB could do a lot of useful things like.. accepting keyboard input in real-time, it's hard to believe the software stack is that demanding today. I'm gonna release a phone with win2k on it and be rich.
Give Mozilla a little more time. A HTML5 stack can be as efficient as a Java language based stack (Android, older Backberry, etc). It's all about the Javascript JIT VM, the web render engine and how efficient the JS code is. So with the upcoming multi process Servo web render engine coded in Rust, FirefoxOS will have an competitive advantage in future.
HTML5 based shells/"OS" have certainly a bright future (ChromeOS is already popular and there is WebOS running in newer LG SmartTVs). A HTML5 based windows manager for Linux/Windows are probably the next thing - that allow offline web apps and native GUI applications to run next to each other and with the windows being actually HTML iframes.
To be fair: My current Android phone has eight cores (the previous one had four) and three GB of memory (previous: same).
Those devices aren't really phones anymore...
As a flame owner I do understand where you're coming from, but the 'phone' part in there struck me as misleading. This S6E is basically a powerful! machine from a couple years back and probably better Graphic hardware to boot, unless that machine came with a gaming card or something.
(obviously the cheap phones don't compare to the S6 or the OnePlus One - but given that the announcement is moving away from the low-end sector I think this is worth considering)
This is a welcome change from Mozilla, but I think they should take it a step further and ditch Firefox OS completely. The original reason d'etre of Firefox OS was that it would run on lower spec'ed and cheaper hardware than Android could, but that's not an efficient use of their limited resources for a couple reasons:
1) Mozilla could contribute to Android to improve it's performance on cheaper hardware.
2) Moore's law is making powerful hardware more affordable for the world's poorest people, faster than Mozilla can get Firefox OS and an attractive app ecosystem off the ground.
Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google. Everyday, apps become more and more dependent on Google Play services, the proprietary set of libraries that Google controls on Android devices. Developers need an open version of Google Play Services (Mozilla Mobile Services?) and even a competitive app store (10% commission instead of 30%?). The natural next step would be to create their own distribution of Android and release it on quality hardware. Not only would they be furthering the cause of free software and open computing, but they would have a revenue stream to continue their mission.
You're confusing strategy with the objective that strategy was intended to achieve. The real reason for Firefox OS was because
a) everything is moving to mobile, and
b) every mobile OS ships its own browser which is not Firefox.
We know from Netscape how hard it is to stay relevant against that kind of pressure, and there isn't even a way to cry "Anti-trust!" because none of these players are monopolies. They just all behave the same way.
If Mozilla creates their own distribution of Android and sells phones with it, then they're extremely relevant in the mobile space. Take a look at the principles of the Mozilla manifesto[1]. Nowhere does it say, 'we need to have a relevant web browser'. It's a bigger mission about an open internet, unrestrained communication, libre software and ultimately end-user sovereignty. When Mozilla.org was created, the best way to achieve those goals was by having an awesome libre browser. As you rightly point out, the world has gone mobile, and the way for Mozilla to continue their mission is by releasing a mobile OS built with their principals in mind. If this was 2007, building Firefox OS may have been a viable strategy. But it's 2015, and the quickest, and in my opinion the only, way to succeed is with a distribution of Android with Mozilla services.
You make a good point. One possible objection: does that actually allow them to do what they are trying to do? Is Android flexible enough for them to bend it to their will?
Shipping a Mozilla Android with their own app store and Firefox on it instead of Chrome is surely a path of less resistance than starting an entirely new OS.
It is worth remembering that Mozilla is a relatively small organization, all things considered.
> starting an entirely new OS.
Gonk, the core of FxOS, is based on Android. It is 'only' Gaia (the UI) that was written anew in HTML, along with performance work on the Gecko rendering engine.
Keeping the UI all in HTML5 (and rendered entirely by Gecko) meant they had to develop APIs and improve OpenWebApps as a spec to fill on the common use cases.
> Shipping a Mozilla Android with their own app store and Firefox
... would require Mozilla supporting a lot more Java code and use cases that don't further the Firefox mission. What does Mozilla gain from running a third-party Android app store, and the support costs that entails?
FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further and faster than a Mozilla-branded Android fork ever would have.
Are we agreed that Mozilla needs a mobile platform of some kind (or a partnership) in order to ensure Firefox is the browser on it? (be it FxOS, MozDroid, or something else entirely)
Re: "FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further," I don't see how FxOS is anything other than a waste of resources if it fails.
If Mozilla went the route of rebranding Android, they needn't fork it entirely. They could just apply their branding & app store on top of Google's releases. The app store is a necessary component because Google won't allow the use of theirs (at least without a price), and it's a user expectation of any mobile OS. (even FxOS has an app store; marketplace.firefox.com)
It's unrealistic to expect Mozilla would become a dominant mobile platform in the foreseeable future, no matter what they do. Like Microsoft, they just need to have some territory, for now. (perhaps they should also consider partnerships with "the new Microsoft", Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)
Totally agree, the best strategy would be to open up android by offering an alternative for Google Play Services. I think Amazon, Microsoft, Cyanogen, FireFox and others should band together to offer a 'third way' with open Android. Hard problem to solve would be who would provide the services and who would run the app store. Maybe the customer should be able to switch what they use. Developers would need to upload to multiple app stores, but this can be solved with intermediate services.
> Mozilla should instead focus on freeing Android from it's dependency on Google.
This is cool and all, but history has shown that people somehow prefer Android with Google apps. Cyanogen has announced that they're taking Android back and all from Google and I wonder how it'll work out at the end. I wouldn't mind seeing the same thing from Mozilla or even more players, but the sad reality is that enthusiasts don't make revenue.
I was, and I am still looking forward to Firefox OS. Not because of the cheap devices, but because it is open, it's html apps and it isn't run by the same type of company that makes Android or iOS.
I've always thought that Mozilla's strategy with Firefox OS was very optimistic/ambitious. It was first conceived just as cheap Chinese Android smartphones were beginning to make inroads into developing markets[1]. In such markets, simply reducing the cost of the phone from $80 to $25 won't increase smartphone penetration as much as you might think because the cost of the phone itself comprises only a small part of the total cost of ownership - the customer still has to pay for a mobile data plan.
That leaves the "open web" approach as the major differentiator between Firefox OS and Android. Whilst I'm a fan of open standards, I doubt the average consumer is going to care enough for Firefox OS to make inroads into Android's dominance of the low-cost smartphone market (in fact, I'd question whether they'll care at all).
At this point, if I were on the Mozilla Foundation board, I think I'd be pushing for a cost-benefit assessment of continued investment into Firefox OS.
Coincidentally, less than 24 hours later, this story crops up, demonstrating how different the mobile phone market is in developing markets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9604049
I can't help but feel some "couch coach" desperation with Mozilla's confusion at where should they aim at.
Google has Android which is open source but "spyware" prone and suffers from vendor incompetence/uninterest in updates -- in fact this will bite Google sooner or latter. While Apple's iOS is privacy aware but closed source and carries a huge price premium.
On the other hand Mozilla is known for open source and for caring for privacy. Furthermore with Snowden's revelations, at least among the IT crowd, as well as governments, there is interest for a secure system.
Give me a high-end phone [1] which focus on privacy.
Something that supports a stack like Xposed and Xprivacy out of the box.
Something whose baseband processor is decoupled from the other processors. And if possible the source code for the sensors or at least the ICD, so that you have an alternative to binary blobs.
Give me something that supports encryption and can get consistent no hassle OTA updates.
And make it with a compatibility layer to Android's apps [2]
I'm all for open source, but Android just ends up being nothing but an headache. A better solution would be welcome.
Neo900 [1] develops a device like that - privacy oriented open platform, with maximum user control over the device. Even though its specs and price might be a bit unsatisfying to some, it's actually a pretty reasonable approach worth supporting - basing its design on N900 and GTA04 is for a small project like that like reaching the low-hanging fruit, while ideas and solutions developed for it such as baseband "sandbox" or hackerbus will be able to be used later in future devices. See also [2] for more details.
Full disclosure: I found this project so worth supporting, I actually became team member somewhere at its beginning :)
Also, mozilla does not make hardware, it can't provide you with the hardware safety you need.
Android is not open source. AOSP is open source but a lot of the stuff you see in a modern high-end Android device is not OSS. On the other hand, all of Firefox OS, its built-in apps and its associated services are FOSS. You can check the code and audit it.
Does iOS really carry a price premium? My experience, similar to the old Mac/PC debates, is the difference is actually minimal at most when you compare with actually equivalent hardware.
It only exist in the premium class, so in that sense, if you want iOS just for the iOS, you are stuck buying premium hardware.
I do think iOS devices are generally a good deal (in the sense that they are worth the money),but that doesn't mean they are not premium nor premium priced. Quality costs money.
I have never understood the "we'll win at the lo-end" approach. Android was designed for lo-spec devices. ART has moved android a little bit away from that focus, and so has some bloat in Google's proprietary apps. But Android can still be tuned for and run on very modest hardware. Competing against Android on lo-spec hardware is not a winning plan.
For the class of IoT devices that are capable of running Linux, Google thinks they can turn Android into a "headless" configuration that uses Android's runtime and base classes, presumably minus the UI classes. Android is, in fact, pretty darn efficient.
And on top of all that, Mozilla thought a Web runtime could be made as efficient as a Java-ish runtime that has a very memory-efficient component architecture? That's just strange.
I really want Firefox OS to be a success. After working in AOSP firmware for last 5 years and dealing with vendor walled gardens, I wish there was a truly usable open source phone.
Firefox OS isn't any better than Android when it comes to vendor walled gardens. Mozilla doesn't enforce in any way any openness of the platform - it just provides the open OS. It might be more complete experience than what AOSP alone delivers, but it's still up to vendor to provide, or not, any freedom when it comes to usage of the device.
Heck, your platform doesn't even need to be open to be able to market it with Firefox OS brand! They have a set of rules you have to fulfill, but basic stuff like unlocked bootloader isn't even part of them.
This sounds like a good change. Hopefully it would bring in a really good experience, not just a clone of the Android One series that compromises on hardware because of price.
Quoting from the email, "This will be the phone that you want to use, and will use every day." For this to be true, these are some of the key things for Mozilla to focus on:
* The responsiveness of the UI.
* A good camera (at least 5MP).
* A decent amount of memory to hold multiple apps (in dormant mode) and reduce startup times of recently used apps.
Running Android apps may be a good interim strategy while apps targeted and optimized for Firefox phones are developed. But this assumes that the phones can run them well. Otherwise it would just backfire completely, leaving Firefox phones as useless devices.
I can't wait for a well performing Firefox phone that's widely available (even if that means costing a few hundred dollars or equivalent)! It'd be great if Firefox can come to fourth place or (gasp) third place in the mobile OS wars.
And Microsoft is only able to sell as many thanks to Nokia's brand recognition prior to buying them (Nokia was selling 95% of all of the Windows Phones before Microsoft acquired the phone division - which just shows what a huge impact Nokia's brand name had on Windows Phone, and without it WP would be at <0.5% market share).
The battery on Firefox OS phones is already phenomenal (e.g., a week or more between recharges). Of course, the trick is not screwing that up when you add the other things.
Sounds like they have no idea what to do now. Not having any apps is probably the biggest disadvantage that can't easily be undone. Android compatibility needs to be to the point where it's flawless for this to make any sense. Personally I'd rather see iOS compatibility but that's very unlikely to happen.
Different idea: why not work on something like PhoneGap that's powered by Firefox? If you can create a super powerful framework/dev environment that rivals native (and uses all the smarts and resources of Mozilla to address all current flaws of these existing frameworks), then you could have devs building in a more cross platform & "open" manner. From there you might actually have enough apps compatible to run Firefox os, or better, have that not matter as much because you're what's underneath every app.
I have a hard time seeing Mozilla make inroads at this point otherwise.
I don't think the flaws in phone gap and other tools are things that Mozilla can fix, at least not without support from Google/Apple, who really have no incentive to help.
Mesh networking is the killer mobile app - FirefoxOS should focus on this, as it fits with their ethos.
The developing world doesn't need telephones, they need secure and convenient means to transfer data wirelessly and code that works with sporadic, slow, shared connectivity. Frankly, they need crypto plus mesh networking.
Make it a platform for privacy-controlled social networking, high scores, app updates ... it should differentiate far enough to win users.
Basically, make it the hacker's choice ... then, you'll get applications, too.
A cheap version without GSM or CDMA would be an option.
Mesh networking + crypto seems to be an incredibly disruptive technology that I'm surprised hasn't seen wide market adoption. The technology obviously exists and works, as it has been shown being used by protesters or in disaster relief areas. Why has this not been proliferated world over, from developing countries to cheap internet providers? (Not calling anyone lazy or stupid, I'm legitimately curious as to what social, technical or legal roadblocks must be holding this tech back)
I ran a mesh networking startup about 2 years ago. A few details about it are here: tricorder.org/eric/uplink.html.
From my perspective, there are two main barriers:
1) It's hard to explain to customers who are used to the current ISP internet access paradigm. This barrier can be overcome.
2) Not only do you need to win customers, you need to win a critical mass of customers within a focused geographic area. #2 is very, very hard imo.
First up, good job writing up your idea in hindsight. I think it differs slightly from mesh networking on mobiles with high latency transfer expectations / custom apps fairly significantly. You were trying to provide the internet as a service for free in real time, I think the killer app is actually embracing store and forward again.
For problem #1, if it works at the consumer level then I think people don't really care about how it works.
For #2, I think the current model of 'use free wifi from coffee shops, hotels, bars, restaurants' that seems globally dominant would work fine.
1) Some participant in the mesh still has to buy transit from a real ISP at location that has good RF connectivity to some part of the mesh (preferably the geographical center). Unless they are operating out of altruism, they will need to charge money, inject ads, steal data, or some combination of the above.
2) If the usage pattern is primarily about internet connectivity, rather than local communication, then the nodes nearest the ISP would quickly become saturated with traffic.
3) If people can modify the software on their radios (and mesh networking is a very popular idea with the Free Software community) then they are Free not to waste their own resources altruistically forwarding traffic for others. You would need to design the incentive structure carefully. Probably some combinations of micro-payments, surge pricing/auction, and bitcoin. Otherwise a simple reputation system (bad "seed ratio"-type metric, no connectivity).
4) The big one. Mesh networking bridges the gap when you have A->B and B->C but not A->C. But if you are in a challenging enough RF environment that you don't have A->C then you probably don't have A->B and B->C either. RF is barely usable (if at all) without line of sight, and putting a repeater in the sky is a rock-solid method of getting line of sight. Hence it is the basis for all wide-area RF communications systems. Mesh improves upon certain arrangements of $35 Motorola FRS handhelds, but not all of them (whereas "repeater in the sky" architectures are unfazed).
Peer-to-peer RF is cool when you are in RF-friendly environments doing mostly peer-to-peer traffic (not access to an ISP). It works in the places where it has always worked, where handheld radios without repeaters have always been useful. Protests and disaster recovery efforts are two such examples. Internet connectivity for the masses is a different beast.
So Mozilla's clever idea to attack the low end of the market outside the US has failed and now they want to pivot. The rub is that now they are competing with Android and iPhone, which have years of head start and gigantic app stores. They aren't pursuing compatibility with those existing app stores, so that will be a disadvantage. And they don't have resources like there are behind Windows Phone.
Even to take a niche, they need a remarkable positive differentiator. As the quote in the article says, "In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Rhetoric like "change the world" isn't it - the specifics matter. "Embrace the web" isn't a differentiator when all Smartphones can browse websites. I welcome you to find in that article anything but a few planned features which might just keep Firefox OS alive without necessarily giving it a competitive advantage.
After watching a few years, I'm not sure even Mozilla knows what the differentiator will be to consumers, because what I always see from them in this kind of press-release piece are vague phrases like "the open web". So for years I have been a little confused about exactly what they are trying to do. A possible clue is that whenever you drill down on projects to which these catchphrases have been applied, what it really boils down to is more Javascript. Please try an experiment: every time you see "the open web" mentioned by Mozilla, see if the same sentence makes as much sense substituting "Javascript."
For years this has bothered me because "the open web" does not literally mean "Javascript," yet Mozilla and its fans consistently equivocate between the two. What I realize now is that this isn't because Mozilla is confused about the difference, it's because their core allegiance is to Brandan Eich's brainchild and phrases like "open web" are just a chosen mode of evangelizing Javascript. Maybe Mozilla doesn't know exactly what an all-Javascript world will exactly bring to consumers, but they want it anyway because that is their understanding of their mission.
The problem with this is that Javascript advocacy doesn't necessarily have a lot of benefit to consumers or even to programmers other than diehard Javascript fans. To be plain, basically nobody gives a rat's ass if their phone uses more Javascript than Java. It doesn't make anything more open to use Javascript rather than other technologies, openness is a matter of licensing and maybe development process. In practice you still end up with a lot of Javascript APIs specific to Firefox OS (and therefore a collection of apps).
I don't know how you're missing it but apps on phones are like desktop software vs the web. Mozilla wants to win that battle and make it possible to use the open web on multiple devices. You won't be limited to a particular OS and APIs, you can just use FireFox OS or the browser and you're good to go. Using JavaScript is an alright decision especially when you have asm.js and you have TypeScript and flow if you want static typing or type annotations.
The flaw in the plan is that no one has tried to get something like Google Docs working on Firefox OS/Mobile and then tried to tune and optimize performance until it worked properly.
If they focused on getting heavy websites to load in under a second come hell or high water, they would have made the web browser king on the phone. Instead we have Facebook cutting out the browser by caching the content of news sites.
You will, of course, be limited to the APIs available in standard Javascript. At the moment that means missing a lot of things that people might want to be able to do (or need to be able to do to write things that act like freestanding apps instead of websites). The way Mozilla tried to get around that was to add a lot of Firefox OS specific APIs and then claim that those APIs were part of 'the open web' because they were going to submit them for standardisation at some point in the future.
Mozilla seem to think that they are the sole arbiter of what the web standards are. The APIs they want to add are 'open' and 'standard' and anybody who is against adding those APIs is an entryist enemy of 'the open web'. APIs proposed by other vendors that Mozilla dislikes are an attack on the open web.
That's not how it works.
Things only become standards (formally or de facto) when all (or nearly all) of the big browser vendors support them. That's the definition of an open standards based platform - it's lowest common denominator. If you don't like that reality then you don't like open standards based platforms. There was little sign that the other browser vendors had any interest in adding a bunch of FirefoxOS specific APIs (just as how Mozilla have rejected various proposals from other vendors over the years).
You can argue that all this is very unfair. Why should Apple and Google and Microsoft have veto power over what APIs are available on FirefoxOS? But this is a trap of Mozilla's own choosing. It's the fundamental problem with the dream of a single platform standard for all user facing software. It creates a tight sandbox (both software architecturally and politically) that gives the big players veto power over everything. The idea of a single grand standard platform with perfect compatibility across all devices is certainly alluring, but it has huge downsides that nobody ever seems to really want to talk about. And that's before you get to the technical issues to do with the web standards being pretty crappy for complex GUI development.
another really good differentiators could be fully open source drivers, including base band firmware. That's becoming an increasingly important issue, and just apeing androids driver model where everything is closed and locked to some specific kernel versions really, really sucks.
It might not attract the masses, but it will easily snag a big following among people that care about this stuff.
So, mobile devices are an aspirational purchase in many of the developing nations Mozilla was reportedly targeting with these devices. People buy phones that look like high end phones in the US, because that's part of what they want from a phone.
I'm not saying low cost phones in developing nations aren't a good goal. That's a wonderful thing, and I think I can understand how the people at Mozilla, who almost always prioritize doing good over doing well, would make the mistake of thinking that building a phone that is good for people in the developing world would be a good way to start their mobile effort.
But, and as much as I hate to say this because it reveals a crass consumerism that has infected the world and patient zero is the US, the reality is that modern phones are luxury items that need some of the trappings of luxury...even in developing nations, where they look to the west to define their fashion and trends. If Mozilla can't win a developed world market, they won't be able to convince people in developing nations that what they've built is worthwhile, especially when there are knockoff Android devices that only cost a few bucks more, which are much closer to what people in the developed world are using.
I could see how it might even seem patronizing to the poorest folks.
I don't know what Mozilla should do; I'm not a mobile mogul. But, I want a Firefox phone. I've wanted one since they announced they were making them. I want one a lot, actually. But, I don't want a shitty phone that's less powerful than my last three Android phones, no matter the price. It's also never been clear to me, as an American, where I can even buy a real FxOS phone. There are dev phones, but they seemed to always just be "sign up for our waiting list" or whatever, which is not something I really do.
Focus on one app: Whatsapp. Say this is the mid 90's and you want to make a dent on the mobile market. So you keep costs low and put a cheapo camera on the thing along a semi-decent mp3 player. But there is one big problem: your Konia 1 phone does not run SMS. Nobody buys the thingy. What went wrong? Oh, its quality, let's put a hi-end camera and try again!
It's all about the apps that people use. Remember MS Office? Oh, nice Macs said the IT managers, do they run MS Office?
Go cut a deal with Zucker and get Whatsapp for FFOS then the phones will sell.
- No performance regressions. Somehow, the blazing fast device I bought a couple of years ago now feels sluggish. Core apps should be timeless: the dialer, the keyboard, task switcher shouldn't be slower two years after purchase.
- Graceful degradation. Websites have no easy way to detect how fast a device is, so they are built for the majority with a bias for the newest and fastest. The result is that cheap and old devices get obsoleted even for the simple stuff. If a $25 phone is as powerful as a 2000 computer, then let the developer feature-detect it and design for it.
- Good permissions. I don't know the solution but there's a problem. Android's model is depressingly bad. iOS's is too dumbed-down to be trustworthy. Firefox's granularity is good to have but web developers seem to assume the user is always going to grant the permission. I always grunt at websites which want my position to find a store near me and display a blank page when I reject it.
- Timely OS updates. Firefox already has a fast release cycle regardless of the desktop OS. Why can't mobile be the same? I believe kernel patches are less of an issue with web apps because the kernel isn't the first line defense.
- Reasonably priced. The $100-200 range is already full of good Android devices. Just make deals with manufacturers to sell a Firefox version of those. They already sell dozens of different phones, so it should be feasible to convince them to add a couple identical devices with a different OS. FirefoxOS only needs one good device.
- Security. Better sandbox the blackboxes (drivers and radio).
Those were my pain points, but I'm willing to make sacrifices:
- 60 FPS isn't that important for me. I care more about response time when I tap something.
- Most animations/transitions won't be missed. Some add value but marginally so. Most are arbitrary and useless.
- Most apps won't be missed. I only use a few.
Apple is margin-driven. Google is ad-driven. They already cause pain to the consumer and market dominance will only make matters worse. They also are walled gardens so they cause pain to the developer. Mozilla is indeed in a similar position to that of the 2000s.
Rust could be a great platform to build a new mobile OS on. Non-garbage collected so it'd be fast and efficient on low-memory ARM devices. Just like Obj-C really gave iOS a headstart on java-based Android. Doubly-so if they want to continue to target the low-spec end of the market.
I used a Keon as my only phone for summer 2013 – summer 2014. Basic apps were good, but — ironically for a web-based phone — the browsing experience was my biggest negative. Not the actual page layout/etc. — that is just Gecko and worked fine if you didn't try to open too many tabs. The problem was the browser lacked basic features like find in page, sync, and adding search engines.
I switched to a Moto E, and I think it actually lags a little more for things like opening the clock app, but I'm basically addicted to Fennec's reader view and sync.
(The "system browser" in FxOS 3.0 is also a major regression on tab UX IMO.)
I think the system browser in 3.x is a significant UX improvement. The old browser app always felt like trying to impose an Android-like world-view on a system where the system was supposed to be a browser all along.
I get that and thought I would like it, but I guess I still use the (web) apps and the web browser quite differently. I hope further refinements change my mind!
More specifically, I tend to open and close a lot of tabs, which involves more steps now, and I want new tabs to open in the background.
Something I don't see talked about too much, but what I think could be the most exciting thing about the Firefox phone, is that a web app (hosted on the web) could have full access the the dialer, sms, camera, and all of a phones capabilities.
I think then you might see a whole range of independent homescreens and app suites developed and offer some well designed alternatives.
I'm a nexus 4 user and I really don't like all the basics. The dialer, contact list, messaging. I think they are confusing and difficult to navigate.
The fact that ubuntu and mozilla are both launching open phone platforms that compete in exactly the same space baffles me. The fact that ubuntu has it's own browser based on blink, and firefox is convinced that all you need is a browser is just....
Mozilla could make a rustphone where apps run 10X as fast as all that webby crap, never crash, and don't force the user into frequent hardware upgrades just to keep the UI responsive. Make smartphones that are as reliable as dumbphones.
I would love it if someone would come along and offer an android experience while applying an value framework like the Mozilla manifesto. Not saying this has to be Mozilla, though it would make sense for them to do it.
There's no way 3.5" is the "sweet spot" these days. Maybe for primary school students, at most. Otherwise kids want phones with larger screens these days, too. I'd say 4.3" should be the minimum for just about anyone. Phones are more compact than the days of iPhone 1, and most of them are 16:9 now, which would make 3.5" way too cramped for using the keyboard.
Is there some e-ink display that can produce more than 64 colors in development? Even if they make the OS look decent with that small of a pallette, I don't think that the e-ink display will be attractive to people if your webpage rendering looks like garbage.
I think just browsing can be done at a reasonable speed, but I would think that app developers would be put off by the restrictions that e-ink implies.
There is an apkjs IRC channel on mozilla [1] so they might cross-compile Android apps via emscripten to asm.js. Couldn't get any info from moz when I asked around in that channel.
Only if there's a realistic way to put emphasis on the web part again at some point. Otherwise they'll just become yet another Android-alike (effectively handing control over the platform to the Android developers at Google).
The nice thing about web technologies is that there isn't a single party that controls the APIs. I don't know any other comprehensive API collection with this property (POSIX is in the same ball park, but which POSIX-only application is mass market compatible these days?)
I'm still confused as to what Mozilla actually does.
At one point they(or the company that spawned them) built a web browser that they sold. Then they were the non-profit offshoot of that keeping an open source browser alive.
But now they're... erm... what is it exactly that they are? They're a non-profit that sells browser searches, or something. I'm confused.
In short, they try to save the Internet from being run by a few corporations or governments. So, minus cape, they're trying to do superhero things that are often at odds with the biggest companies in the world. Whether they succeed in that with any given project is up for debate, of course.
So far, Firefox phones have been a flop. Personally, I want one, because I care about privacy and I care about the open web, but I don't really want a shitty $25 phone. This news is good for me, but I don't know what it says for Mozilla's vision in the mobile market.
I've heard people suggest that Android took a while to catch on...but, it really didn't. By the time Android had been on the market for a year, it was clear (to me, anyway) that it would become the dominant player for many of the same reasons Wintel became the dominant desktop platform. Firefox OS doesn't have much to show for the time they've been on the market. It was never even clear to me I could buy a "real" phone (i.e. not developer phone) in the US running FxOS.
Mozilla at one point had momentum before Chrome came up and wasted it while letting Firefox become slow and memory hog (This was before Chrome came out, I am not commenting on latest versions).
I don't see Mozilla turning around because they are trying to be followers where both Apple and Google are executing well enough at least to maintain Status quo. Why go after Smart Phone Market while at best you can be 3rd or 4th best (with less than 5% market share)?
I bought the mid-spec Flame developer device out of curiosity, and it's not much better. Everything feels slow, sluggish and unresponsive. Even Android 2.x was better.
My quad-core i7 desktop still occasionally struggles to render the latest and greatest HTML5 stuff at 60 fps. How on earth do they expect a phone to do the same?
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-...