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. It’s wild.
Anyway, 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
They timed it right so that they fucked up both ways, in the browser and in the low end web-connected phone market. They are clowns.
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.
Same, having competitors to Android and iOS would be great.
The are some alternatives out there. Calling them competitive might be a stretch though.
I had a Windows Phone (NOT the older Windows Mobile) for a while back around 2011 thanks to my job as a multi-platform mobile developer. I loved that phone and the OS and developing apps for it was a lot easier and faster than for Android or iOS. I was surprised at how quickly Microsoft kicked the whole thing to the curb.
BlackBerry OS 10 was my favourite one. They way it used widgets and gestures was really cool. Hub application was awesome. Android and iOS copied a lot of it later but I liked how simple and minimalistic BBOS10 was compared to them. Never tried developing for it though.
Had a BB10 Z10, loved that phone! It was a but sluggish to be sure but I was gutted when they pulled the plug.
Nokia Lumia 700 in bright blue was stunning! I really liked it, the tiles were different and it felt funky. Pity they abandoned the project.
We have GNU/Linux on smartphones now. There is PinePhone and Librem 5. Some Android phones can run GNU/Linux too.
There’s a Linux phone, but I’ve heard it is a beautiful mess.
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.
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.
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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.
We have PinePhone and Librem 5 now.
there are a few like postmarketos and ubuntu touch for specific phones, among others
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
Iphone mini apparently is pretty good.
decent 5" android phone
That size is discontinued
I got a oneplus one, that was good too
I want to see something like this but without the bezels
Nexus 5 was just peak EVERYTHING for that time. Badass hardware, badass display, size, design, everything about it was amazing even if it had no fingerprint sensor until the Nexus 5X and 6P.
God I miss when they made phones with love.
People have been praising some smallish Asus thing lately
Reminds me of the original 3.5” iPhone. Absolutely tiny by todays standards.
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 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 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.
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
This makes me nostalgic for my Palm Pre and webOS.
Me too. I loved webOS. Favorite phone I’ve ever had.
I was thinking of getting one of these when they were very cheap. I really wanted FF OS and other alternatives to succeed or at least exist, because Android was just never very good and I foresaw how Google is just gonna abuse its monopoly and make life difficult for everyone.
But Mozilla was like “now it’s not the right time to introduce a mobile OS” - wtf, when if not exactly at the time when markets were still forming? It was now or never, and Mozilla threw in the towel so quickly it almost feels like someone got a nice paycheck from Google or something.
And while I never got that phone at the end, it did look like it had some decent basis and ideas in it that could’ve developed into something cool. Alas.
What ever happened to the Ubuntu mobile OS?
Canonical stopped development and ubports took over
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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.
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
some banks only have apps
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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.
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.
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.
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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)
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.
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Not saying I disagree, would love to here some more thought on why though? Especially if your device has biometrics like fingerprint/touchid?
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
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Yeah my next phone will probably be a pixel specifically so I can load it with GrapheneOS.
iOS.
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.
That being said, I fucking love my Galaxy S5. I miss the days of rooting and custom roms on practically every android device.
Isn’t the software supposed to correct for such false input in most cases?
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.
I definitely miss simple rectangle displays. Curved corners and notches annoy me to the point of giving me anxiety. For bezels, one can at least put the phone in a case.
Do you actually get anxiety from a curved corner or was that just hyperbole?
I do lol. I got used to it on my phone because they’re so tiny and it’s a taller screen than 16:9, so it doesn’t cut into videos and such. But on a PC screen I wouldn’t stand it.
I also can’t stand the rounded squares buttons that are now “standard” in Android. I keep a lot of apps out of date just because the newer versions changed circles to that abomination. I even asked the dev of Infinity for Lemmy to bring the option for circle button, and they did! 😃
Nobody understands my suffering lol.
Lol I really don’t. I am trying to figure out what condition would lead to actual anxiety for something like this.
I think I hate it mostly because 1) it needlessly ruins a good thing, 2) of the general implications of “we are changing something fundamental like a rectangle, and make it standard, and you can’t do anything about it”.
And also the general corporatisation of design. Everything has to be lifeless and smooth and just enough friendly and appealing to everyone. So what we get? A mix between a circle and rectangle. My artsy soul is crying.
So, it’s dumb and pointless, it ruins a good thing, it offends me, I hate it, and yet I’m somehow supposed to accept it as the new standard? Fucking 1984 this is.
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They’re coming back. The Galaxy S 23/22 Ultra both are squared.
Still a hole punch tho
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.
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.
I completely forgot Firefox had a phone.
Facebook has phones too back then, though they’re just Android with Facebook button.
Not long before Amazon came out with their spyware phone.
Seriously - they bragged about how the Fire Phone was always spying on you and still tried to charge $600 for it. Like three months later, they had to discount it to $99 and include a year of Prime.
This reminds me… What happened to Sailfish?
It is still around, but most mobile Linux enthusiasts have probably shifted their enthusiasm towards completely open-source mobile Linux distributions (Sailfish OS has a proprietary UI).
Sailfish OS was my daily driver for quite a while. I ran it on up to two Sony Xperia X Compacts and liked it very much. I also owned the Jolla phone. The X Compact was never officially supported, but since it is similar to the officially-supported Xperia X, someone adapted it and you could even use the Android compatibility layer and receive regular OTA updates.
The two things that made me leave (I’m now running GrapheneOS on a Pixel 5):
- Officially (= with the proprietary Android compatibility layer) you can only install it on Sony phones, where you can’t unlock the bootloader without permanently damaging the phone, i. e. wiping the TA partition. The last Sony phone generation where you could backup the TA partition was (at the time I made the decision) the Xperia X series.
- Jolla decided to not port the Android compatibility layer from Android 4.4 to 8.0 on the Xperia X series. Instead they wanted you to buy a new Sony phone … See the first point to understand why that was not an option for me. ;)
I think Sailfish OS might have seen more success in the consumer space, if Jolla didn’t mess up their hardware department. They failed to bring any successor to the Jolla phone from 2013 to market and they also failed to launch any other hardware, e. g. Jolla Tablet.
It is also beyond my understanding why they chose Sony phones and not Nexus / Pixel phones, which are meant for developers and enthusiasts and can easily be bootloader-unlocked and flashed without permanently modifying / damaging the devices. They also didn’t officially port Sailfish OS to the Pinephone (yet?), which is another popular platform for mobile Linux enthusiasts.
Anyways, the dream of Sailfish OS lives on to this day on my Pixel 5, since one of the last things I did on the platform was extracting all the ringtones. Whenever someone calls me, I am reminded of how excited and hopeful I was back in 2013 when Jolla launched Sailfish OS and their phone. :)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=lfAixpkzcBQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I also had a Sailfish phone, but someone broke into my appartment and stole it together with other electeonic devices. I alwaydös wanted to know what happened when they tried to sell it :D
Thief had an epiphany and became a Linux kernel committer.
I once had a very unique camera stolen. I expected the thief won’t know what the fuck it is so it’ll show up on a classified nearby; so I asked the local photography community to keep an eye out. A couple weeks later I was notified that that kind of camera is for sale in the town over. I went to look as a potential buyer with cops following me, and got it back.
Not exactly an answer to your question, but it does discuss Sailfish a little and is pretty interesting: https://youtu.be/HzCMKbhK-EY
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/HzCMKbhK-EY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
FFOS was an html mess. The GUI didn’t have much to offer. You couldn’t organize your apps since they were only accessible through the cluttered app drawer.
The HTML was not the problem, the never finished OS was one yes.
I still liked it because of how easy it was to develop apps for it like I did with my https://jeena.net/feedmonkey
Indeed, there were advantages when It came to app development. There was for example, the Unity web exporter. Embedding web apps for the OS worked out of the box. On the flip side, there was an impact on performance. Like there was no multithreading possible. At least not for the Unity Web export.
We had two of these that ended up sitting in my desk at work back around that time. They were sent to us free with hopes we would port our (shitty) android/iOS apps to it. One was a bit newer, but they both just felt shitty compared to the equivalent Nexus or iPhone of the time, so I never bothered trying to use it as a daily driver. I wasn’t even on the app dev team, no one else wanted them or cared at all. Was fun as a technical curiosity though.
