Today 10 years ago I went to Poland to buy a Phone with pre installed #Firefox OS on. The Phone was a Alcatel One, so very shitty. Two years later I installed Firefox OS on my Nexus 5 instead.
It was a very good concept, but sadly rolled out on too shitty hardware so it never caught on.
Imo that’s what caused Firefox to lose market share to Chrome. They focused too much on Firefox OS and deprioritized browser development. In one example, it took them a long time to implement FIDO when it was already functional in Chrome.
Considering how dominant the mobile OS has become, this wasn’t a terrible gamble. Like they lost and it looks bad in hindsight, but you can’t blame them for trying. If it had succeeded, we’d be living in a very different world of technology right now.
My recollection was that the game was already down to just iOS or Android by the time this came out. Windows Phone still existed, but it was already being ignored by popular apps like Snapchat.
Plus the people who even knew about this (tech people) didn’t like the “everything is a web app” idea when Chrome OS did it, much less a smartphone.
They tried to focus on lower end devices and that’s not inherently stupid. If you only need half the ram and CPU of a low end Android phone, you can undercut Android’s marketshare - in theory at least.
focus on lower end devices and that’s not inherently stupid.
It is. Phones are an aspirational market, it’s the top end that sets market trends. It’s been the case since 2007 at the very least, and arguably well before that. Focusing on the low end was a huge mistake from Mozilla leadership, and it’s sad that nobody seems to have paid a price for it (beyond the FFOS team, which was eventually disbanded). FFOS almost killed Mozilla.
No. You’re way too euro/us-centric. There’s a huge market for low end phones in Africa, South America and large parts of Asia.
If the FFOS team would have managed to get, say, a Nigerian carrier on board and produce a viable smartphone at 40$ or so, that would have absolutely dominated the market there, especially in the early days of smartphones.
The needs of the poorer 4 billion of this planet are not met by 500+$ phones that break every six months and have a battery life of about 5 minutes.
KaiOS, a FirefoxOS fork, is used in the JioPhone in India. It is a feature phone with some internet capability, and is reasonably popular among lower middle-class users.
You can probably have much larger profit margins on that $500+ phone, and if it breaks quickly (and if consumers are OK with that trend which they seem to be), then you get even more money.
That said, it hasn’t been my personal experience that smart phones break easily. At least not the few I’ve had that have all lasted me 5+ years each. I’ve been using my Pixel 6 with no case, and I swear this thing tries to commit suicide constantly. If a surface isn’t completely flat that thing will slowly slide until it falls and hits the floor. I’ve had it been literally 10 minutes after setting my phone down, the thing will seemingly fly off the desk out of nowhere.
Anywhere, this thing is built like a tank. Still works great.
You can probably have much larger profit margins on that $500+ phone
Cool, then go ahead and sell the 500$ phone to a nigerian farmer.
Getting a foot into the high end market is almost impossible, the barrier to (successful) entry is gigantic. Tackling the underserved low-end market is a much more viable strategy. And now comes the kicker: Not being able to enter a market is (and this will shock you) even less profitable than entering a low-margin market.
I really don’t intend that as an insult, but you’re looking at this from a very western, rich, profit-oriented standpoint. Mozilla never was about profit and the world is larger than our western rich kid bubble. 500$ is enough to feed a person for an entire year (or more) in some countries.
But they didn’t manage to - nobody will, not writing an OS from scratch. To support that level of development you need high per-device margins that only high-end devices can command. The low-end is restricted to low-margin new devices and secondhand high-end models - because, despite your preconceptions, high-quality models can work for a decade when not abused. The poor Nigerian will buy a secondhand flagship today and, if they get wealthier, a new one tomorrow; they know the market as much as anyone and will not buy something that simply makes them look poor.
The view that the developing markets will eat shit simply because it’s cheap, is an out-of-touch colonial mindset that dooms a lot of companies.
This perfectly explains the demise of BlackBerry phones too.
User experience beats everything else. It sounds like some essential components were never finished
I think what destroyed Firefox market share was a RAM leak that took them like a year or two to fix. It consumed all of your available RAM and would bog your computer down. I know that’s what drove me away. It took like 10 years for me to come back.
Once Firefox lost session manager and downthemall, it was dead to me.
Nowadays I use edge. All the benefits of chrome plus it’s leaner.
I use kiwi browser on phones for the addons, and because it’s faster than Firefox
I haven’t looked into those specifically, but I’m pretty sure there are alternatives that do the exact same things for FF
I use Tab Session Manager and Session Sync add-ons with Firefox and I’m quite happy with them.
Fxos was just android + a custom launcher, it was not a huge investment since it was just a launcher in the end. They focused on low prices, a camera to create video reports and a usable mobile browser.
This is incorrect, it was also Linux-based but completely unrelated to Android.
It was android 5 (or maybe 6 with its 2.6 versione) and the launcher was gaia
Wish something like that would come back.
It’s KaiOS now, completely independent from Mozilla
People talk about FFOS like it was a failed project while in reality it was successfully commercialized and is so popular it has a native WhatsApp client. It has ~70x more users than LineageOS. Maybe Mozilla didn’t knew how to make money out of it but it’s definitely was a great OS project.
Mozilla as a company is being a fucking disgrace. They have one of the most popular and beloved browser and they can still manage to fuck it up.
IDK, I still like them. Definitely still managing not be evil. And keep in mind they are competing with multi-billion $ corporations that pretty much control how the web works today. Google (and others of course) first turned the web into ad funded business and then used their huge ad revenue to build a really good browser and promoted it using shady practices. What was Mozilla supposed to do? Sometimes simply having better software is not enough.
I always thought it’d be more of a feature phone type os. Couldn’t compete with what Android had to offer to the mainstream Western market at the time using primarily HTML, but I’m glad to find out that is what it turned into.
KaiOS runs on feature phones, with some advanced stuff like WiFi, 4G net and an app store. It should run on low-end smartphones, but I don’t think any have been released yet.
We have PinePhone and Librem 5 now.
there are a few like postmarketos and ubuntu touch for specific phones, among others
Same, having competitors to Android and iOS would be great.
oh wow, i had forgotten! I too was hopeful…
This makes me nostalgic for my old Palm Pre. It was basicallly ChromeOS: Phone Edition. So far ahead of its time if was dismissed….and the hardware engineering was trash. That may have contributed to its downfall a little.
The Palm Pre was so fun. I bought a pre+ for 20 dollars towards the end.
I’m glad the ceo at the time was wise enough to recognize what she had and made the os open source, and still somehow managed to sell it in the end. Web os lives on tvs now, although many of it’s benefits are wasted there.
Downfall? It has 150M active users today.
This makes me nostalgic for my Palm Pre and webOS.
Me too. I loved webOS. Favorite phone I’ve ever had.
If you are still interesting in Linux phone, consider looking at PinePhone Pro. I would recommend it only for experience users and the phone experience is far from Android, but software is catching up. Check @linuxphones
P.S. writing this comment from PPP :)
Or SailfishOS! Has Android layer where apps can run seamlessly (without some hardware stuff support, like fingerprint etc.).
Want to mention that on GNU/Linux we also have Waydroid that provides Android app support :)
I know about that, but from my experience nothing really compares to the ease of use of the SFOS AlienDalvik. Though something may have changed since I last checked (1.5 years ago).
I mostly wrote it for other readers.
Also used both, I would say they are similar. But Waydroid can’t forward notifications to the main OS as in Sailfish. Sad that AlienDalvik is not FOSS :(
How is PinePhone Pro now? It’s been over a year since its release and reading on reddit a few months ago it still seemed behind the original PinePhone. I would like to upgrade to the Pro version, but I’m worried it will be another year for it to be stable.
I think its on par with the original PP now. I also own PP and I would recommend to upgrade, performance is way better.
But if you do, I would recommend to use megi’s u-boot fork to improve your battery life.
That’s cool! So there aren’t any issues with phone calls anymore? I think people complained about audio quality, but I guess my PinePhone also has some issues like that.
But if you do, I would recommend to use megi’s u-boot fork to improve your battery life.
Doesn’t everything use Tow-Boot now?
No call issues at all, I daily drive it.
Doesn’t everything use Tow-Boot now?
Yes, but it’s a distribution of U-Boot and it some releases behind. Megi recently implemented many cool features for U-Boot for PPP and it will take time until they appear in Tow-Boot. So I would recommend to use provided binaries from Megi for now, see his blog for more details: https://xnux.eu/log/091.html.
Didn’t know about this, thanks!
I know about the PinePhone Pro and I am quite experienced.
But even hardcore hairy dude like Drew Devault disavowed it (source).It seems that the main complaint is calls and SMS. I use different distro (Arch, btw) with FOSS firmware for the modem and calls / SMS work fine for me.
bad link ?
Sorry, forgot that I need to use exclamation mark: !linuxphones@lemmy.ml
:)
Nah. just not properly linked instance.
Are there any foss options for non-tech people?
If you mean GNU/Linux - no. But you can buy a phone that supports Lineage OS. It’s Android distribution, so you will have everything you used to have on your phone and the OS will be fully FOSS.
Thank you. This seems to be the best option at the moment. Right now I’m stuck on iPhone which I bought without realizing how restrictive their OS was. However I don’t have the budget or interest in buying a new device currently, so I’m just keeping an eye on my options.
Ah, nostalgic! I loved the Firefox OS! I even preached about it to family and friends. Good times.
Unfortunately it never felt like a finished product.
What is this? A phone for ants?
I remember a time when all of the companies were striving to make cell phones as small as possible. But as soon as touch screens came out that trend reversed.
When we realized we could watch porn on them.
The nexus 5 was peak size for a phone imo, it’s a nightmare trying to find a decent 5" phone nowadays.
I got a oneplus one, that was good too
I want to see something like this but without the bezels
Iphone mini apparently is pretty good.
decent 5" android phone
That size is discontinued
Reminds me of the original 3.5” iPhone. Absolutely tiny by todays standards.
I never understood why they targetted low end hardware with a tech stack that’s notoriously slow (web).
This was exactly my (dumb, layman) view of things - great idea hobbled from the outset by the marriage of slow web apps with slower hardware.
To keep it affordable?
Then use something more efficient than the web stack. In the end, Android ran better on the same devices and had better software support.
I remember when Ubuntu for phones was hyped so big, then it fell flat…
can you still get that
Yep https://ubuntu-touch.io/ . Rolling out LTS 20.04 for their supported phones at the moment.
For the curious people, Firefox OS kept living in a way, being used as the foundation for KaiOS, which was a smart operative system for “dumb” phones. This one took off in certain parts of the world.
Am I the only one that misses a thick bezel?
Thick bezels are great for actual comfortable usage, but they don’t look sexy so they’re no more
It’s nostalgic for sure, but from a UX perspective I am so happy with the edge to edge displays.
My only gripe is that they work best with at least a little Bezel. Too little side bezel especially, and the edges of your palms will give you false input. Incredibly annoying.
The iPhones have been really good with this thankfully.
Isn’t the software supposed to correct for such false input in most cases?
Sometimes. Depends on the vendor really. Samsung sucks at it.
I wrap my $1200 piece of hardware in a good case. Basically gives me a bezel. Check out the OtterBox Commuter.
That’s what bugs me about modern phone design, though. They could put Otterbox-type protection right on the phone and that’d be fine for most people. Personally have an S23 and I think it’s unnecessarily ugly, thin, and easy to drop, when it’s not in a case.
I don’t mind it, gives me the choice of whether to put a big bulky case on it. Personally I like it but I understand not wanting to use one.
I also don’t mind having the choice of whether or not to use a case, but it might be nice if it were an included accessory.
Samsung has their XCover and Active lines; They’re just not flagships.
I’m so cheap, this one plus nord POS for 250 suits me pretty good, comes with a case and screen protector sticker from the factory. I’m more thrilled to have a regular headphones port and memory card slot.
Sometimes, makes using a tablet easier & I liked “chins” on iphone for the fingerprint reader.
I still want to go back to my Moto G6. The fingerprint reader on the chin is perfect. It replaced all the buttons so I didn’t need the virtual chin or finicky edge gestures.
You can still get phones like the pixel 7a, which has thick bezels, so I’d say they aren’t completely gone from the market yet.
Unfortunately they still won’t put in a headphone jack which is a deal breaker for me. It’s a real shame because i would otherwise really like a pixel phone.
My Pixel 4a 5G has a headphone jack.
today there are comparable projects with like postmarketos and ubuntu touch for specific phones, among other linux mobile projects
Also Sailfish OS (though it’s not fully open source), which I use.
I sincerely hoped Jolla would at least continue to make one technology demonstrator hardware model available for purchase by enthusiasts. The current situation where I have to buy a phone and then buy OS separately is not feasible for me.
I mean, the license cost me $50 (maybe €50, not sure). It’s not that much, just pretend the phone cost $50/€50 more.
Jolla can also be purchased and used in very few countries. 4 according to their list. I don’t mind paying for an OS and a phone, but their phone support is also only for very expensive Sony Xperia phones. So I can see why it is not feasible for a lot of people
If you mean the OS, it can be purchased in all of European Union plus some other countries. With VPN you can purchase it everywhere. Though I read that the Xperia phones don’t have the necessary bands for USA.
I really wish they had opened all of the system.
I mean: what is it they can still lose? I’m pretty sure a few licenses are not making them break even. Do they fear some third parties would copy the OS and release phones with it? Would that not be a sign that other companies trust in the OS and help them land bigger contracts?
/e/ managed to get a business off with a full opensource stack, without building the phones themselves. What prevents Jolla to try the same approach?
They could have been the main developers of the true Linux opensource phone OS. Instead, they’re going to get passed by Plasma Mobile, and then they’ll have nothing left to offer.
I think they can’t open the Android part because of aome 3rd party licensing, but yeah, the rest should be open source.
Ubuntu Touch has been pretty decent, and because of how it’s built, device support is a lot more widespread. Although it’s in this perpetually broken state now, because of the transition to the Focal base.
No luck at all with Postmarket though, on any of my devices. One is marked as bootable but unusable, but I can’t even install it fully
Ahh, my appraisal might be the opposite, PMOS seemed to have better software and support for things like the Pinephone and I thought it ran on more devices, but I am happy to see both projects and it’s nice to see both designs
On a device that supports PM, it will without a doubt have better software support. Current UbPorts runs on Ubuntu 16.04 base, so it basically can’t run anything new until they fully migrate to at least 20.04
Fira font <3
deleted by creator
Can’t you just use the bank website instead of an app?
No. All of the fucking banks make their own shitty app for 2FA, no way around it, at least in Europe. They are buggy, bad UX and less secure than simple TOTP but have their own dev departments to employ. I hate them with a passion.
Thats unfortunate ☹️ both of my banks provide a PWA, one provided a hardware 2FA device once I went in and told them my device is rooted
This is what we do in my house. Pretty easy.
deleted by creator
What bank do you use that doesn’t have a website?
The website unfortunately doesn’t offer the same user experience as the app, some functions are more “hidden” or behind more dialogue compared to the app
deleted by creator
some banks only have apps
Yikes. I’d change banks
I have a de-googled LineageOS (absolutely no google packages or play services installed) with microg and Aurora Store. I use N26 and it works fine.
Aurora still works, but the anonymous accounts are all broken. They get throttled because of too many requests on the accounts which need to be manually generated.
I believe it works fine if you log in.
Does Aurora still work? Last time I tried to degoogle completely, no store alternatives worked, Google seems to have their thumbs on them very effectively.
I’ve been using Aurora on CalyxOS with no issues.
deleted by creator
Up for GrapheneOS! It’s weird that to have a degoogled phone you need to buy Google’s ones but so far is the smoothest ungoogled experience I had (I tried LineageOS without GApps, LineageOS with microG and /e/ OS in case you were wondering) Also, since google services are installed in a sandbox you could even have a profile where you have them and all apps that require Google Play separated from the profile you normally use which is pretty cool (even if I’m using them sandboxed just with the permissions I need on my primary profile atm)
can confirm! grapheneos is great, ive had no problems w it
I know the feeling. I tried using a de-googled LineageOS for a while, but it just wasn’t viable because today’s world simply isn’t compatible with this lifestyle any more. I wish this technology had existed back in 2010, because I would have been completely free of Google. Living without all the fancy apps and stuff would have been fine, but living without money… that’s where I draw the line.
i gotta say this: dont bank on your phone. downvote me all you want but i dont think its secure. its almost just as easy to do it in a computer
Your phone is probably the most secure device you own, provided you don’t download shit like TikTok.
I disagree. Most phones can only run proprietary operating systems and the modem runs its own proprietary operating system, which very likely has access to system memory. Your phone carrier tracks you everywhere you go and can listen to your phone calls.
deleted by creator
why exactly is it mandatory ?
Not saying I disagree, would love to here some more thought on why though? Especially if your device has biometrics like fingerprint/touchid?
i may just be an old fart, but i dont believe biometrics are secure for most applications. normie phones are sadly easier to break into, physically or with malware, especially if the operating system is not foss. if you are also using your phone as 2fa for the bank, then thats as good as nothing: 2fa device should be different to the login device, for sensitive logins. most banks have their own goofy ahh proprietry 2fa app, not a usual totp. i just dont get why some people are so adamant on banking on a phone. its only marginally more convenient; we all used to manage without phones. a lot of banks also enforce stupid password like exactly 8 characters long. i think any app that doesnt work on a rooted/ungoogled phone is immediately sus.
Have you tried using the aurora store?
I was pretty happy with my lineage-os install that had the play store as the only google service. F-droid for other apps, nextcloud for cloud+calendar. But you need an unlockable phone and a bank that allows unlocked phones for their app.
If its only cuz of the unlocked bootloader have a look at DivestOS, Graphene or Calyx
Edit: i use my ING Banking App on my Pixel 6 with graphene and before on my OP6 with Divest
Yeah my next phone will probably be a pixel specifically so I can load it with GrapheneOS.
iOS.
deleted by creator
The N9 was killed by Stephen Elop, the new CEO coming straight from Microsoft with a mission: get Nokia bought off by MS.
Right from the start, he ran an explicit counter-advertisement campaign against the N9 and Meego. Whatever commercial success it would be, this would be the first and last device running MeeGo from Nokia, and there would be no support for MeeGo.
Nokia was to embrace Windows mobile OS, that turned out to be a total disaster. But indeed, after he tanked Nokia, it became cheap enough to bought by MS, as Nokia got both cheap and undsirable by any other big player due to its binding to MS bad mobile OS, and Elop got his VP status back there.
This is a shame in the history of mobile phones and OS!
Later, some former Nokia would start their own phone company reusing part of MeeGo. Jolla was born.
deleted by creator
Reminds me of the pre phone/tablet line with webOS and the way hp or better their short lived CEO Leo Apotheker killed it. That was such a shame great devices and great os.
I remember Ars Technica had an article or series on his bad decisions called “Apotheker needs an Apothecary” and lit into him for all the dumb things he was saying and doing. I just don’t see how you can have the manufacturing and branding behemoth HP was then, get giftwrapped Palm and webOS while RIM was still in the process of imploding, and fumble the bag so hard
I still get mad at this. I had bought Nokias for most of my life and it was probably the biggest and best european tech company and it was destroyed by that idiot.
I resent him slightly less than the idiots who appointed him CEO. To be appointed, you need to come with a plan you present to the board. Who the hell thought “let’s destroy everything that made Nokia successful so far and become a Nth Windows Phone maker!” was a good strategy??
https://seekingalpha.com/article/916271-how-stephen-elop-destroyed-nokia
Symbian OS still had a very large user base and some support from large customers. The N9 and MeeGo was getting better reviews and customer satisfaction reports than Samsung and Apple’s phones! The obvious strategy was to navigate a transition between the legacy Symbian and a rising and promising MeeGo. But since his mandate was not to make Nokia successful but rather to have bought by MS, he could trash the business at will: made it cheaper for his real employer, MS.
Seriously, that guy should have been jailed!!
This situation was revolting in every way. They destroyed the best european tech company. They had everything. A music service, a maps service superior to Google Maps, mail service, everything. It was sickening.
