Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 0:41 UTC (Tue) by heijo (guest, #88363)
Parent article: Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

I fail to see what's the advantage compared to Android + Firefox for Android + some way to package HTML5 sites as apps.

In fact, I only see a huge disadvantage of not running Android software.

Also, considering good phones cost at least 600 euros, I fail to see how a 70 euro phone can be usable, and in fact, looking at the specs on GSMArena, it's a piece of shit compared to the Galaxy S4 and HTC One.

The laughable 320x480 screen is enough to wonder how one could possibly use this thing except perhaps to keep a door open, hold some papers down or fix a table with a short leg.

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Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 0:50 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (5 responses)

A large part of the exercise is to make a phone which brings the modern mobile internet to people who can't afford a 600€ phone. You may not be able to play Hero's Duty IV: The Slaughterfest on it, but it looks like you can have decent mobile web access, with all of the communication, social, and utility benefits that provides.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 0:53 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (4 responses)

As long as I can play blackjack on it while I'm stuck in line at the DMV... it'll meet my particular needs.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 1:07 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (3 responses)

I think you may be to settle for solitaire at this point. If that doesn't work for you, though, maybe you could use the web browser to renew your license so that you don't need to stand in that line.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 1:13 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

How dare you presume that I live in a state that is actually progressive enough to have invested in online driver license renewal infrastructure.

How dare you sir.

-jef"no seriously that would be great... feel free to write my governor to actually extend online renew to driver license instead of requiring in person every other renewal"spaleta

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 4, 2013 7:18 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (1 responses)

Or adopt the EU model, where your driver license is valid at least until retirement age? That'd require offloading the functionality of identification to a separate document, though, something that US and UK libertarians seem to have an irrational fear about

(as a result of which, too many organizations in the US require driver license and SSN, which arguably is a dangerous invasion of privacy)

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 5, 2013 11:16 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

> (as a result of which, too many organizations in the US require driver license and SSN, which arguably is a dangerous invasion of privacy)

A more widespread problem is that it facilitates identity theft.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 5:36 UTC (Tue) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link]

I think it doesn't matter which market section FirefoxOS targets.

I rather see some impedance mismatch between 70-euro and all-HTML5.

I personally like HTML5 technology and find JS a quite good language, though.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 8:18 UTC (Tue) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

I agree about your take on Android but "considering good phones cost at least 600 euros" made me laugh..
You have a strange definition of 'good phone'.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 9:06 UTC (Tue) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

I have a phone with even smaller screen and it works for occasional email, sporadic web browsing and even GPS maps.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 9:29 UTC (Tue) by Quazatron (guest, #4368) [Link] (4 responses)

You are not the target for this phone.

This phone is targeted at people like me, that find that 80€ is the most you can spend on a phone.

So while you may find it laughable that someone would buy such a low powered device, I'm sure that if your monthly income was about 800€, you'd think twice about spending 600€ on a phone.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 19:58 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

This was tried before. This approach just does not work. Smartphone is well, a phone which is smart. And smarts are added by some additional software (apps, dedicated web sites, etc - does not matter). Creators of said software, strangely enough, want to be paid. And if you target less affluent people then naturally they spend less money. This can be compensated (for example Android with it's 50% is now about as attractive as iOS with it's 20% because it targets slightly less affluent people), but if you only target lowest level of the market then the incentive to create smarts is just not there which in turn means that your smartphone is not all that smart - and then why buy it if you can have more reliable and even cheaper dumbphone?

Nonetheless the phone is out there and this is a start. We'll see how it'll work long term: FirefoxOS has decent carriers support which means it have a fighting chance. Not a large chance, but still...

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 22:50 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (2 responses)

What you are saying boils down to:
We need big closed ecosystems that try to recreate the web in apps to be successful.

I don't think that is true. It may be what we end up with, but it is not the best solution.

I don't know how many times I wanted information that is easily available on the desktop web, but on mobile it was hard to get. Sure I could have searched for an app, installed it and then used it for getting that info.
OR I could have gotten it from a good mobile web page .. those often don't exist because we have apps now.

Brave new world!

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 4, 2013 13:03 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

I must be missing something, but in what way is Android a closed ecosystem?

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 7, 2013 10:03 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

We need big closed ecosystems that try to recreate the web in apps to be successful.

You need big ecosystem, period. It does not need to be closed (Linux servers ecosystem is pretty open: even if RHEL plays important role there it's not the only game in town), but needs to be big.

Short-term you can attract developers who hope you'll grow big soon and hope to grab larger piece of smaller ecosystem, but if you are 10 times smaller then other players then it may be better to have 15% there rather then 90% here.

I don't think that is true. It may be what we end up with, but it is not the best solution.

It's the only sustainable solution. Even if someone (e.g. government) will send money to support you (like it was done with FGCS) or you keep some small niche for itself (like Apple did with desktop publishing) long-term you either need to grab larger piece of the pie or you'll die out.

Brave new world!

Yup. I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. Desktop web moves in the same direction, too: more and more dare are presented as AJAX-driven webapps and the data is given to search engines when and where it's convenient for app writers. Similarly on the phone apps are receiving the ability to plug in "global search" tool. This all converges in more-or-less the same point - the only problem is that point is far, far away from "all information is easily crawlable and accessible" ideal of early web.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 10:43 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Also, considering good phones cost at least 600 euros,

Lessee... 600 euros is about 500 quid (actually slightly more) at today's exchange rate. With that information in hand, and judging by the GBP prices on a certain major High Street chain's website, your "good phone" appears to be everyone else's "this year's top-of-the-line phone". The only company with more than one model at or above £499.99 SIM-free is Apple.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 10:43 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

The top of the line Blackberry was 320x240 not so long ago, IIRC. And you could read your mail, make calls, and browse the web. Web browsing is hard because of the incontinence of page authors putting up navigation bars, advertisements, pointless graphics and so on - but that problem doesn't entirely go away when you have more pixels, since you still have a small physical screen.

Ironically, the smaller the screen resolution, the more you really need native apps rather than web pages. While it's possible to write websites that are fast and usable on a 320x240 display, nobody really bothers to. A native app by definition is written to be usable on that particular hardware.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 3, 2013 10:37 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (guest, #49641) [Link]

That is the whole point of HTML/CSS you can make apps that scale from a large to a small screen and support both mouse/keyboard and touch navigation.

Yes, there is a large part of the web which does not yet do that, but the apps are mobile optimized websites/webapps.

It is worse that their are no search engines for native app content.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 13:39 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Some people want it all: a cheap phone, the latest and greatest in screen, processor and storage technology, millions of "apps", a sensor for everything and free services to keep it all entertaining. Some people even want the ethically important stuff, too, like responsible sourcing and manufacturing (Fairphone) or hardware that isn't hostile to Free Software (GTA04, perhaps), but usually this is the first thing thrown overboard when the screen on the device in question isn't "3D hyper-retina" or whatever the buzzwords of the day might be.

So: cheap, good, ethical, available. Pick maybe three of the four!

Meanwhile, as far as "apps" are concerned, one very good reason for bringing Web technologies into the picture is that it lets organisations target devices without having to get into the development silo around the popular mobile platforms. If you're already doing vanilla Web development, there's a chance you won't need to either get up to speed yourself in Java/Android or Objective-C/iOS and all the pitfalls, or to pay someone good money to do a mediocre job on your behalf.

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 22:01 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Also, considering good phones cost at least 600 euros

Where do you shop? I purchased a very nice Nokia N900 for less than 200 euros from eBay and in my opinion, it's far superior to any Android phone out there.

You can even get new Android phones for much less than 600 euros where I live (Canada; maybe CAD $300 or so for a decent Samsung Galaxy.)

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 3, 2013 9:19 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Also, considering good phones cost at least 600 euros

EUR600 is approximately £500. For £500, I can get not merely a good smartphone, but at least some of the latest top-of-the-line smartphones (a few creep as high as £600, and there's one insane outlier at £1000). I can get last year's top-of-the-line smartphone for about £380, and that phone's slightly-cut-down little brother (which is still better than 2010's top-of-the-line smartphones) for about £250.

And those are the SIM-free (i.e. unsubsidized) prices.