Mozilla is working with two Indian manufacturers to produce phones within "the next few months" for the local market. Chief Operating Officer for Mozilla, Gong Li has said the retail price will be $25. Current handsets are available for $69.99 via eBay in the US.
Chinese firm Spectrum Communications Inc. has been collaborating with Mozilla to develop a chipset for the device, where value is obviously priority. This strategy may not succeed as the devices wont be totally free from competition, low-cost Android hansets are already available.
Related Stories
How KaiOS claimed the third-place mobile crown
In December 2015, Mozilla announced it would be abandoning Firefox OS as a smartphone platform. Many assumed the company's withdrawal would kill any hope of a mobile operating system built around the open web, rather than a combination of native apps and tightly-controlled storefronts. In the last few years, plenty of so-called "alternative" smartphone platforms, including Ubuntu Touch and Windows 10 Mobile, have faded into obscurity, too. Jolla has struggled on with Sailfish OS, but it's never felt like a true challenger to the Android and iOS duopoly. Three years later and a surprising competitor has emerged: KaiOS. The relative newcomer, which makes feature phones smarter, is already running on more than 80 million devices worldwide. How did it grow so big, so quickly? With a little help from Firefox OS.
[...] The operating system that emerged is quite different to Firefox OS. The user interface, for instance, is built around phones with physical keys and non-touch displays. The application icons are smaller and you'll often see a contextual strip at the bottom of the screen with physical input options such as "Cancel" and "Okay." KaiOS optimized the platform for low-end hardware -- it only requires 256MB of RAM to run -- and, crucially, kept support for modern connectivity such as 3G, 4G, WiFi, GPS and NFC.
Feature phones are normally associated with emerging markets such as India and Brazil. KaiOS, however, started in the US with the Alcatel-branded Go Flip. Codeville and his team persuaded AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile to stock the handset because of their proven track record while working at TCL. Those deals then allowed the company to win a contract with Jio, a mobile network in India owned by a massive conglomerate called Reliance Industries. Together they built the JioPhone, a candybar-style device with a 2.4-inch display and 512MB of RAM. It was effectively given away with ultra-competitive 4G plans.
[...] Google Assistant was a particularly important addition. For many, voice is a faster way of typing than pecking a classic one-through-nine keypad with their thumbs. The Assistant talks back, too, which makes the platform viable for people with poor literacy skills.
Previously: $25 Firefox OS Smartphone Coming to India
Mozilla Adding Granular App Permissions to Firefox OS
Geeksphone Stops Support for FirefoxOS with No Warning
Mozilla to Cease Development of Firefox OS
The Story of Firefox OS
Google Invests $22 Million in the OS Powering Nokia Feature Phones
(Score: 2) by AnythingGoes on Thursday June 12 2014, @09:05AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @09:21AM
supply and demand... why does apple sell ridiculously overpriced phones? because they found a class of dupes to buy them
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @09:53AM
As much as I would like to think that so many millions bought these devices because of their superior latency qualities to make music, as much I know that nothing comparable is available for Android. Oh, and some people prefer something that, you know, just works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @11:25AM
In Soviet Russia YOU make music on an iphone.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday June 12 2014, @11:33AM
It only "just works" if you view of working is exactly the same as Apples, otherwise it doesn't just work
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 12 2014, @12:32PM
To the point and including the use of the certified iHand [kym-cdn.com] or the suboptimal aftermarket iHandle [kym-cdn.com] to hold your iPhone differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday June 12 2014, @01:46PM
Oh man it comes in different races .. er.. ethnicities er... I mean colors! I want a black hand to contrast with my white iPhone! Or perhaps a hispanic or indian hand to match math my kitchen cabinets. On second thought scratch that. I forgot I don't own an iPhone.....
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Thursday June 12 2014, @03:57PM
The Black Hand of Microsoft? [nbcmiami.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 13 2014, @03:35AM
It "just works" if you hold it "just right."
I see nothing special about a $25 smartphone. I paid $125 for my Kyocera last year, no subsidy. Bought the same model for my daughter this March, only fifty bucks, again no subsidy (she'd dropped her subsidized iPhone, the screen no longer functioned).
And it just works, in places iPhones won't (which could be the carriers, of course). What will your iPhone do that my Kyocera won't, except die when you drop it or get it wet (mine won't, waterproof and shock resistant)?
I see iPhones and Samsungs as nothing more than status symbols (I don't know anyone with a Samsung). All the iPhone users I know drive small BMWs, which also won't do anything a Ford or Chevy won't except be really expensive to maintain. Still waiting for someone to give me a good reason to buy an iPhone.
I sneer at status seekers, especially those who go into debt to seek status. Status seekers must have pathetically low self-esteem.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday June 12 2014, @11:48AM
Look, I'm all for smartphones getting cheaper, and for bringing affordable tech to the developing world.
But, for all the hype about price, price is not the thing that makes a phone useful. It's performance.
Great - it's a cheap platform that can run a FOSS OS. Can it run it well? Can you actually run most of the apps that are available? At an acceptable speed? Will the next OS update be plausible to run on the hardware?
A few years ago, I bought an "affordable" low-cost Android phone to hack around on. Some of the worst money I ever spent. Half the apps I heard about from friends wouldn't run smoothly. I had frequent crashes without warning. It wouldn't run Ice Cream Sandwich (new at the time), so I was locked out of the upgrade cycle (which started the clock on obsolescence, not that it really mattered) . It didn't matter that I "only" spent $70 on it (I bought it, appropriately enough, while I was in India). It could have been free and it still wouldn't have been worth the money. It's sole contribution to the world was a lesson learned in "you get what you pay for" and an addition to the scary growing pile of global e-waste.
Can you build a $25 phone that is capable of running FirefoxOS? I'm willing to believe you can. Can you build one that's actually a usable smartphone? I'm going to stay skeptical for now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @12:11PM
> Can you actually run most of the apps that are available?
That is not a valid requirement for a low-end phone.
What matters for low-end phones is whether or not it can run the subset of apps that cover the majority of the needs of low-end phone buyers. That's probably less than 5 apps but the specific 5 apps will vary by country/locality due to the network effect.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday June 12 2014, @08:08PM
> Great - it's a cheap platform that can run a FOSS OS. Can it run it well? Can you actually run most of the apps that are available? At an acceptable speed?
I'd look at it this way: either you can buy something more expensive or you can't. In the latter case, you put up with whatever it can't do, in the former case you get it because it does the things that are important to you, or because you made the wrong buy (in this case you are right).
Both options point to designing a phone that can do basic things well, important demanding stuff as fast as it can, and the rest will have to wait.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @08:10PM
Urban hipsters always think the world revolves around them.
News flash: It doesn't.
India is a country of 1.25 billion people; most of them are subsistence farmers.
The needs of those people are:
1) telephone communication
2) good information
Should I harvest right now or do market prices totally suck this week?
Will it rain later today or do I need to water my crops? [google.com]
Could I be lowering my costs [googleusercontent.com] (orig[1]) [rinf.com] and/or improving my yields by using some new trick? [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [grist.org]
Playing the latest splat game is WAY down the list.
.
[1] Actually, the original is at CounterPunch.org but their web guy is an idiot, stuck in 1996.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 12 2014, @08:38PM
Considering that MozOS is based on HTML V5? I'd say the answer is a giant neon blinking FUCK NO!! because HTML V5 is a clusterfuck that has been designed by committee and shows it. Now I haven't been able to find any stripped down HTML V5 sites to test ONLY the page rendering itself, but since HTML V5 is pushing its native video support perhaps that is just as well because if its "video support" is any indication? Its deep fried ass.
I'm sorry HTML V5 fans but when you compare HTML V5 with H.264 with the previous solution of Flash running Spark or WebM? Its not even close, HTML V5 is a bloated fat resource sucking hog that requires hardware acceleration to keep from dragging most systems out there down to a crawl! This isn't even taking into consideration the fact that as a "solution" HTML V5 doesn't even have half of the features that the previous Flash had, like web animation, strictly comparing like to like and video performance its just piss poor. This isn't surprising when you see how much of the process has been ramrodded by apple and MSFT, two companies trying to sell new hardware, both of which more interested in pushing a centralized appstore they control over building a feature complete replacement, but to consider HTML V5 as a suitable replacement for pretty much anything right now is a fricking joke, it sucks! It sucks CPU cycles, it sucks RAM, it needs hardware acceleration just to function at the same level the previous solution did without, its just not any good.
A sensible solution would be to toss HTML V5, take a FOSS codec (so that anybody can run it, no tollbooths like MPEG-LA to hinder progress) like WebM, Dirac, or Theora and build a solution that was better in every measure to HTML V4 and Flash but sadly that just won't happen as long as you have Apple and MSFT ramrodding their own agendas. But as long as HTML V5 is on its current course its just not gonna be any good, sure you can bake more and more hardware acceleration in to try to lighten the load but that takes more power which equals worse battery life, not something you want in a mobile OS. I wish Mozilla luck but I wouldn't be wanting to use Moz OS ATM, HTML V5 is just not a good base to build upon IMHO.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 13 2014, @03:44AM
It's sole contribution to the world was a lesson learned in "you get what you pay for"
That old saying is backwards. You don't, in fact, always get what you pay for, but you almost always pay for what you get. Example: Alieve. Three times the price of generic and it's the exact same chemical. If you buy Alieve, you certainly don't get what you pay for.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org