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back to article ZTE Open: This dirt-cheap smartphone is a swing and a miss

Of the various open source Android challengers currently under development, the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox OS was the first to reach the market with actual, commercially available products. The ZTE Open smartphone is one such product. Unfortunately, that's about all it's got going for it. When ZTE started selling the Open …

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  1. bjr

    Why do an OS at all?

    If the goal of Mozilla is to preserve an open web by moving the world to HTML5 then that's what they should concentrate on. You don't need a dedicated OS for that, you need the development tools, an app store, and a really efficient HTML5 engine. Instead of doing yet another OS, which is doomed to failure, they should enhance Firefox to run apps that look like apps, not browser windows, create a really good open source HTML5 development env, and start an an app store for HTML5 apps. Firefox is already on every platform and it's widely used so they aren't starting from scratch, just extend it to provide a means of running the same apps on both desktop and Android environments.

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    1. jillesvangurp
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why do an OS at all?

      Technically, Firefox OS is mostly android but minus the UI framework. Firefox has two problems currently:

      1) it clearly doesn't work very well on underpowered hardware. I'd say a showcase device with only 256MB was probably seriously misguided.

      2) The usability of the software that is intended to replace menu's, soft keyboards, etc. is not that good.

      Both are fixable issues. The first will be fixed by Moore's law: 80$ phones will just keep on getting better specs. The second one is a matter of just keep on working on the software. There's no question that Mozilla can do decent mobile browsers. Firefox on Android is a very decent browser for example.

      People get very confused about what native actually means. Native on Android means a mix of java code running in a virtual machine (Dalvik) and native libraries that the java code has access to. One of those native components is the browser. So, naturally a lot of 'native' applications actually rely heavily on the browser already and are merely very thin layers of java code that script the browser and decorate it with a few native menus for things like settings and hooks to e.g. authentication UIs.

      So, the vision for Firefox OS is right. It's just the execution that is lacking. If you consider that modern browsers are capable of running native code compiled to javascript and come with Web GL and multimedia capabilities, it is not hard to imagine a world where most of what you see is running inside a browser instead of outside the browser. It's just a matter of time before those capabilities come to mobile.

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    2. skierpage
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why do an OS at all?

      Mozilla is doing everything you suggest. Firefox OS apps are just HTML+CSS+JavaScript calling Web APIs, and many of the APIs are already available in desktop and Android Firefox. The Firefox Marketplace, and the button you put on your web site to "install this as an app", works in all three already.

      For some, a "Really good open source HTML5 development env" is your text editor together with debug tools like Firebug in a browser window, though it won't satisfy people coming from Interface Builder or Visual Studio.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Compare it with Samsung pocket

    A friend bought the Firefox and I have a Samsung pocket. Nearly the same price. We compared the two and gave points from 0 to10. We gave the Samsung 7 and Firefox 2. The Pocket beat the Fox in every aspect hand down. I think Fox are going to be extinct soon.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Compare it with Samsung pocket

      Samsung Pocket is more than double the price of the ZTE Firefox

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    2. kit
      Reply Icon

      Re: Compare it with Samsung pocket

      I would like to compare the android with firefox os similarly to chrome to firefox browser. Initially firefox were both slower and unstable, after some time, firefox beats chrome both in speed and stability, which I expect firefox os will do in future.

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  3. h3

    Advantage will be only a Chinese backdoor not an NSA one maybe that will be suitable for some people.

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  4. Steve Graham

    Where are all these $80 Android phones which are so great?

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    1. (AMPC) Anonymous and mostly paranoid coward
      Reply Icon

      I've been shopping around for some cheap Android phones on a couple of Chinese sites, take a look here

      http://www.ahappydeal.com/

      and here

      http://www.everbuying.com/

      All good fun and some are in the 80 to 125 USD range. Check it out

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  5. mc nobby

    cheap chinese phone in 'not an iphone' shocker

    You serious ?

    Cheap chinese phone running a barely beta version of an OS , strictly speaking only for developers. Isnt as good as an iphone or android phone costing 5 times as much and with many more many hours of development time. Is that what your telling me.?

    Next your be telling my my Nokia 5100 is old and slow or my Psion 3 is crap for web browsing.

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  6. Test Man

    Look, comparing this mobile to any other mobile in any time period is complete nonsense. Fact is the mobile is barely useable NOW. It doesn't matter if it's a "v1" or that it's supposedly "a developer mobile", it's a mobile that shouldn't be touched by anyone at all because it's simply unusable.

    Now if a newer version turns out to be an iPod killer, then great - but fact is that THIS mobile right here right now is simply not worth the bother.

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  7. Oldvalve

    I bought one - great battery life - good screen brightness, no lag and it all works very well, a bargain for the money, £59 delivered.

    It is simple to use, and a great start. It is nice to see something different from the ususal suspects and not high end with a million unusable apps. this one is running on version 1.0.1 so perhaps some improvements have arrived since your test version?

    Buy one!

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