Google invests $22 million in the OS powering Nokia feature phones
Google is investing $22 million into KaiOS, the feature phone operating system that has risen from the ashes of Mozilla's Firefox OS. While Google rules the smartphone world with Android, KaiOS is slowly emerging as a popular choice for feature phones, particularly in emerging markets. KaiOS started last year as a forked version of Firefox OS, and the operating system ships on some Nokia-branded feature phones like the Nokia 8110. Devices from TCL and Micromax are also powered by KaiOS.
Google's investment might seem odd given its Android dominance, and its efforts with Android Go, but it's clearly strategic. "Google and KaiOS have also agreed to work together to make the Google Assistant, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Search available to KaiOS users," says KaiOS CEO Sebastien Codeville.
I always liked the ideas behind Firefox OS, but the promised $10 to $25 smartphone never materialized. Would you use a KaiOS phone?
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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @04:16AM (3 children)
Because then I could potentially fix what I don't like about the rest of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @04:17AM (2 children)
Give me a removable battery and a physical keyboard and I'll take two.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @04:43AM
Give us those, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and no internal microphone, and we'll buy one for every agent for every op.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @07:27PM
The battery in the Gemini PDA is accessible, but I haven't tried removing it. It's definitely more complicated than pop-in pop-out, but doesn't look to be impossible to change. Hardware keyboard, MicroSD, 3.5mm... It will have full support on Sailfish 3 as well (already has android, debian, and images for Sailfish 2 and that other non-google android distro (Lineage?).
(Score: 1) by petecox on Friday June 29 2018, @04:53AM
Reviving its mobile HTML5 services on KaiOS is just testing the water.
Since Chrome OS devices (Chromebook, Chromebox) are set to receive app support via a container, who would choose to run Android on bare-metal?
Somewhere within the depths of Google HQ, someone is likely busy porting Chrome OS to their Pixel 3XL prototype.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Friday June 29 2018, @05:16AM
On my phone I generally only use it for three things*: voice, text, and GPS navigation
If Google Maps worked on a feature phone, I'd probably just use that.
*: I do run a NES emulator and use tool apps like Wifi Analyzer from time to time.
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Friday June 29 2018, @05:34AM (1 child)
Depends. Is it about to become another informant for Google?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @06:18AM
Well ...
... what do you think?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilPapa on Friday June 29 2018, @05:51AM (7 children)
Can someone please tell me what the fuck a "feature phone" is?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ilPapa on Friday June 29 2018, @05:54AM (1 child)
OK, never mind. Against better judgement, I looked up "feature phone". For those of you who might not know, a "feature phone" is exactly the same as a regular phone, but it's cheap as shit. I guess being cheap is the "feature". I wonder why they didn't just call them "cheap phones".
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @06:24AM
Almost everything before the iPhone in 2007 would fall into the feature phone category.
With Firefox/KaiOS, you are getting something that is sorta like a smartphone. Maybe not quite.
(Score: 5, Informative) by KritonK on Friday June 29 2018, @09:46AM (2 children)
A featurephone is a phone with added features. A smart phone is a general purpose computer that can also make phone calls.
The distinction is becoming more and more blurred these days. If it doesn't run Android or iOS, you are more or less stuck with whatever apps come preinstalled with it, and its battery can last for up to a month on standby, then it's probably a featurephone. If it runs Android or iOS, you can install an app for just about anything, and you need to charge it at least once a day, then it's probably a smartphone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sgleysti on Friday June 29 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)
My work gave me a samsung galaxy 7. After I turned off location, bluetooth, wifi, the blinky notification LED, the always-on but mostly dark background (oled screen), and uninstalled most of the apps, I only need charge it every 4 days or so.
This thing has a huge battery. Thankfully the engineers were still diligent about sleep mode power, you just have to turn off a bunch of stuff.
I still made a standalone white noise generator that I use with noise isolating earbuds. It takes 870uA running at moderate volume and about 2.7uA in standby. Should last 1000 runtime hours on 3xAAA. People said, why not use a smartphone app? Well, mostly, I like making things. But it's hard to beat the runtime of purpose built devices.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday June 29 2018, @11:34PM
I need that for when my mother-in-law visits.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 29 2018, @10:15AM
It's something for the angry kids.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:13AM
I think it derives from carrier terminology, where a feature phone had more capabilities than just making phone calls, and a smart phone used more data, which they wanted to fuck you in the ass for.
(Score: 3, Touché) by lentilla on Friday June 29 2018, @06:38AM (3 children)
My preference would be that someone invests $22 million dollars into removing Google from Android.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @07:27AM
Can i have the Windows Linux phone 11 please?
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday June 29 2018, @08:29AM
Nah, google would just then "invest" in whatever came along next.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Friday June 29 2018, @01:30PM
Or remove Android from the Linux smartphone.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29 2018, @09:10AM
The price point wasn't the issue since that's mostly in the hands of the hardware people. The problem was Mozilla moved to other technologies company wide. The Javascript+HTML5(online/offline) switched to WebASM+HTML5(online). The C++ switched to Rust. The WebASM switch is especially huge since it's a completely new stack based (like Forth) s-expression (like Lisp) language with a strict binary encoding that is written, secured and optimized completely differently from JavaScript or Java but substitutes both in the online and offline use cases. And as such, addresses both the business need to replace Java and the technical needs to kill Javascript (and burn it; and bury it where no one can ever see it's ugly face again).
As for the openness issue, an s-expression binary format with 1:1 text representation is more readable then most Javascript out there. And being stack machine means there weren't be duplicated routines for pipelining like in Java or x86 executables so we're talking about some really lean & clean debugging workflow here. But hey, you already have webassembly in your browser so pop open that built-in debugger and look up examples online and see for yourself. Quite hacking friendly if you ask me.