KaiOS takes on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly | Hacker News Reader

KaiOS takes on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly

economist.com

134 pointsedward93 comments

A non-paywall writeup: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/03/27/kaios-may-succeed-w...

"It also has received significant investment from Google, and in most cases, Assistant and other Google applications are preinstalled."

Great; so it's not an indie up-and-comer, so much as Google taking a sideways approach to capture emerging markets.

I mean ... I'm of two minds with this. You're not going to get people outside of the hard core tech/FOSS community to use something else without at least the most basic stuff we've come to expect (maps, web, contacts).

The hardest one is maps of course. There is HereMaps as a commercial alternative or using OSM data, but not all of them have the same transit or nav data.

So long as this phone doesn't require the Google eco-system for over 50% of the apps to even work, that's something better than Android.

I'm less concerned about Google Maps than the Google partial-ownership. Based on the sentiment above, I would assume that it either does or will eventually "require the Google eco-system for over 50% of the apps to even work". It's like Android in the early days - at first they just wanted to get a foothold, so everything was very open. Only once that solidified did they start locking it down.

Google is trying hard to get a foothold on KaiOS, the OEMs that partnered with Mozilla (and particularly Qualcomm with its Qualcomm 205 chip) need something like KaiOS that can run well on 256mb of RAM and less than 16GB of flash, as Android is a pig (even Android One).

I wish Mozilla made an effort to get Mozilla DeepSpeech and Mozilla TTS onto this platform, as Speech to Text seems to be the first thing Google has gotten added to KaiOS. Problem is, with these budget devices you don't usually have the RAM for even a full memory mapped TF Lite model, and end up with a stripped down language model that is much less accurate :c

Mozilla could run DeepSpeech servers, but it would be a similar commitment to the Tor Relays they operate...

This isn't aiming for the hardcore tech crowd, or even for the casual western user. This is aiming for emerging markets where even a cheap Android phone is way out of the price range of a standard user.

It's often easy to forget how big India and China are, but their population combined makes up about 1/3 of the world, so it's potentially an incredibly lucrative market to capture. I think large parts of Africa will need phones too once their infrastructure is available.

> This is aiming for emerging markets

Agreed

> India and China

India[1] and China are the two largest phone manufacturers in the world right now. I would not consider them emerging markets in terms of smartphones.

1: https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/india-is-now-world...

But they're the producers, not the consumers. And the rest of the world uses them because they're paid so little that they can't afford the phones they're making.

> can't afford the phones they're making.

Really? I was under the impression that Chinese consumers almost exclusively purchased Chinese-brand phones. How many sales do Samsung and Apple make in these countries? I thought that was the (forced?) appeal of the lock-in to Chinese apps.

Whatever happened to Ubuntu mobile OS?

OsmAnd is perfectly usable (I would say an improvement) as a Google Maps replacement, uses open data and is free software.

There is no realtime traffic data, but that is impossible without turning every phone into a telescreen.

Google invested in KaiOS but they don’t own them. It has yet to be seen how Google-centric KaiOS will become.

If KaiOS does get significant market share, they will.

KaiOS already have Google Assistant built in, in the newer versions. I see the idea and to some extend the usefulness, but that's one feature I specifically DO NOT want in my phone. I'd be more at ease with Google Maps, a Gmail app and things of that nature, but Assistant is a big NO.

I want to try out/run KDE Plasma Mobile, but so far the only supporter devices are the Nexus 5 (which you can get new-old stock off eBay for <$100) and potentially the Purism 5 when it comes out.

Hopefully PostmarketOSs work can bring it to more devices.

Can any of these KaiOS devices be purchases cheaply in the US? I wonder if the company has added telemetry or other spying related stuff on top of the old FirefoxOS base. Even if they have, it will be good to have another option if it becomes more popular.

Nexus 5 is not supported anymore only the nexus 5x.

Looks like that should be Nexus 5X[1] (I have an old N5 in a drawer and was momentarily intrigued...)

1: https://docs.plasma-mobile.org/Installation.html

N5 is the current "flagship" device for the postmarketOS project, which does intend to package Plasma and other stuff as well. Though it doesn't actually support phonecalls or anything like that on the OS just yet...

Is Plasma Mobile a real os or an Android shell ? I can't figure out by reading their website

It's a shell to a real os. It's not based on Android. Someone needs to build it into a device image (i.e. distro) before you can use it, though.

It's a "desktop environment" for phones, or rather a phone environment. Most the work is done to package and deploy it as a UI to traditional Linux distros.

> only supporter devices are the Nexus 5 (which you can get new-old stock off eBay for <$100) and potentially the Purism 5 when it comes out.

There's a also the PinePhone, which might be a lower cost alternative to Purism 5 [1]. Currently in development (I think dev boards are now available), expected launch is end of the year.

[1] http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone

* Announced: FOSDEM 2019, dated: 2 February 2019

* Prototype: Q3, 2019

* Expected Released: late Q4, 2019, pending on software availability

I have a Nokia 8110 phone with KaiOS installed. It works fine as a phone, lasts 4 days per charging, but keypad input is still a pain. The best use of such phone would be with AI assistant. For example, you pick up the phone, press a button and speak, then the screen shows the information or it sends out a message, etc. In another word, it could be a portable smart speakers with screen, minimizing keypad input.

I really don't understand why these new feature phones don't take better advantage of modern voice transcription technology to make those old clunky dialer keyboards obsolete.

Actually that is one of the key features of the Xiaomi Qin 1s i mentioned earlier. It has built in client AI feature for simul-tran of 19 languages. Lots of other accessibility features like screen reader, voice input etc, so one doesnt have to refresh T9 input memory. Although as other posteers have pointed out T9 isnt so bad. I have found that T9 input is remarkably more accurate in word choice than Swiftkey swipe action on everyphone on which i have used it. Slower to enter (guess about 30% for me) but more accurate.

Assuming it has T9 input? I found an old Nokia 8250 and was shocked by how quickly I remembered how to type on T9 and how quickly I could type - and because of the physical nature of the keys I was able to type without looking at all.

I've actually found that it's equally possible to type without looking when using T9 on an iPhone after i made and now use https://typenineapp.com

Simply having larger buttons and the phones frame as a reference point seems to be enough.

i'm glad Mozilla had the foresight to abandon this project right before it became a profitable enterprise.

KaiOS takes a significantly different approach in bringing FirefoxOS to market than Mozilla did.

For starters, they targeted feature phones instead of Smartphones

I've been in commercial contact with FirefoxOS people, and they were definitely targeting phones that are the same specs as what KaiOS currently supports. (512MB RAM, 4GB storage, which is half the RAM and half the storage of Android Go) I don't really know they were calling it smartphones or feature phones though, that might change things.

FirefoxOS was also exclusively targeting the touchscreen market, which by that point was already totally saturated. Their partner deals weren't the best either, and they really launched their product before it was ready which sullied their image quite a bit.

KaiOS had the benefit of hindsight to see where Mozilla fell over, put in mitigations, and then shift focus to non-touchscreen devices to lower costs even further.

A lot of their stack is still open source under the MPLv2, however there are rumours that Google is 'encouraging' KaiOS to shift their rendering engine over to Blink. Whether this happens or not remains to be seen.

Switching to Blink would be a huge undertaking, ditto for moving off classic Gecko.

Mozilla ditched Firefox OS & Thunderbird over the huge amount of work that would need to be redone to move to newer Gecko (as Servo components were ported over and swapped in via Project Quantum), but that would likely be less work than getting Blink to be responsive with minuscule amounts of RAM, then go app by app and optimize the crap out of it (which Mozilla had dozens to hundreds of devs doing for Firefox OS while they were developing it).

Mozilla started a feature phone project, that was later canceled. One issue at the time was that the carrier partner was Verizon, and that was a huge gap of values due to how VZ was fighting against Net Neutrality.

KaiOS is run by "Operators and device manufactureres" like Reliance, by bundling proprietary code. Not truly OSS.

Mozilla has always had trouble getting anything off the ground that isn't tied to Firefox being used by consumers.

Firefox OS was pitched as a direct competitor to iOS and Android, which itself was a death sentence when you saw the kind of hardware it was launched on. "Severely underpowered" would be generous. Plus they launched at a time when mobile web (that FF OS depended on for app delivery) features were awful compared to native apps.

Their timing was poor too. The market was saturated with alternative OSes back then and not enough PR oxygen to go around.

- Nokia Meego OS

- Windows Phone

- Blackberry Playbook OS/BB10 OS

- Sailfish OS (ex-Nokia people)

- Ubuntu Touch OS - WebOS

The point was to eat the bottom of the cellular phone market, as Mozilla saw Blackberry dying, Ubuntu Touch & Android requiring way too much resources, and Windows Phone killing Meego yet not succeeding in retaining Nokia's marketshare.

What Mozilla built was an OS that could run on very basic hardware (eg: what an OEM can build for $5 to $10) and be more usable than the alternatives out there that were even more expensive.

A price war led by Mozilla was never going to pan out without buy-in from the OEMs and cell carriers, but after Mozilla ditched the project, Qualcomm seems to have decided KaiOS is the only reasonable thing for basic phones to run, and Google is funding it just enough to encourage integration of some Google services.

Let's say KaiOS today is owned by Mozilla with it's current user base. How does it help Mozilla ?

Does it help to keep the web open? Does it bring revenues to justify the risk and loss of focus ?

Same as Google. KaiOS ships with Firefox by default, they get eyeballs, they get search revenue from default search engine and so and so forth.

I'll admit to being critical of the effort at the time, wanting focus to be on the browser. Ahead of it's time maybe. In 2019 making PWA's first class citizen doesn't seem so crazy, and might allow it to get to a viable ecosystem.

sarcasm?

I think so.

injustice

As a total outsider it was my impression that Brendan Eich was one of FirefoxOS’ biggest boosters and when he got kicked from the company for other reasons instead of promoted from CTO->CEO, the project lost its backing.

I worked at Mozilla on Firefox OS until shortly before the project was killed. I wouldn't say that's the case at all. Andreas Gal was considerably more influential on Boot2Gecko and FxOS than Brendan, at least once it came out of Labs.

Mozilla really just got caught in between being an OSS organization and working with proprietary phone companies, carriers, baseband developers, etc. We were used to working transparently on wiki, Github and IRC, and suddenly had NDAs and confidential code that partners insisted on. There was a large culture clash, and the effort both took a bunch of momentum from the browser side and ended up putting unique technical constraints on Gecko and the Firefox Browser, both in terms of necessary functionality and on the development cycle.

That last could be a killer because you couldn't do anything quickly as everything had to be tested at length for interoperability, etc. FxOS was usually pinned to something older than the browser development (consider the security bug implications there) for extended periods of time, and teams had to shuttle fixes back and forth. Given that some of the changes were basically hacks to get the phone going and had no benefit to the browser, I'm sure that caused a lot of friction.

Partners also wanted to see formal processes guaranteeing their stake, and that was at odds with the more "steer don't plan" way Mozilla tended to run. The people that were brought in that were more familiar with formal process and could make partners happy weren't as familiar with Mozilla's community or culture, and that also churned things a bit.

Basically, it was a perfect storm of issues to deal with--Brendan leaving was just one of them, and possibly the least important. Morale wasn't awesome, and the window of opportunity for a new smartphone OS was closing--if it was even open in the first place.

While there was some talk around shifting to feature phones as a focus/market gap (basically what Kai has done), it was very late in the game. After a point, I think a decision was simply made to cut bait and get back behind the browser again. Quantum was the (IMO very good) result of that focus.

Honestly, Mozilla did as well as I'd expect any organization of its type and size--which is not as well as I'd expect a greenfield organization tightly concentrated on the goal to do. KaiOS is that latter thing.

> ...suddenly had NDAs and confidential code that partners insisted on. There was a large culture clash...

I was wondering why it failed when it had so much going for it. Tragic.

It makes you wonder the secrets that Google withhold...

NDAs and confidential code were mostly to let chipset vendors ship closed source version of the telephony components, so they would not have to disclose their extensions to the RIL standard packets, the integration with a-gps, etc.

However there was an open source implementation (MozRil) that worked well enough.

FirefoxOS failed commercially because we could not get on board the content partner(s) that make or break a mass market Mobile OS.

Thanks for your comment! Really appreciate the insight.

Firefox OS did not come out of "Labs" -- Andreas and Chris worked in Client Engineering, led at the time by Damon Sicore. I took all of engineering including server side pieces formerly under Labs led by Mark Mayo in January 2013.

Firefox OS, neé B2G, was a skunkworks project for sure, which needed shaver and me as exec sponsors to avoid being killed in the cradle.

KaiOS's success could be read as us being too early (but we always thought we were late, starting in 2011); or as Mozilla not sticking it out and working on the low end to make deals such as the JioPhone one and others which I think were under way with Verizon. Whatever the case, KaiOS pulled off the vision and used code and engineers from FirefoxOS, which counts as a win for the concept.

Edit: so if the "window was closing", did it re-open? I think rather the window was always open, some variable amount, and awaited Reliance Jio's amazing growth via free-for-N-months 4G data. Android never fit in the low end, so the window was always there at some width of openness.

We had a concrete business opportunity with several high volume customers lined up. The big driver was 4G transition. To convert legacy 3G bands to 4G carriers have to move feature phones onto an LTE capable platform. KaiOS managed to capture the same opportunity.

The main reason that Firefox OS was shut down was that management wanted to focus on western markets and desktop, which was and is the only revenue driver. I left since I didn't see any growth or opportunity or interesting problems to solve in that Venn diagram.

Sorry about the mistake re: Labs. I had thought B2G started there, but I should have gone back to check myself.

Shaver and I were executive sponsors, Andreas Gal and Chris Jones were the lead engineers. See https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/dmip1Gp...

When I left, Andreas was already lined up as CTO and Li Gong was still heavily involved in FirefoxOS -- I'd appointed Li COO but that got walked back, I think. Li stuck around for a year but left a year later (https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/mozilla-restructure/) to do Acadine. Andreas left in June of that year (2015). You'd have to ask them for details, if they are able to comment at all.

They didn't have a hardware distribution network like the one described, so they were right to kill it.

Mozilla wanted really FOSS. KaiOS never released source code. When asked they always tell me that contact vendor (who do not want to release). You cannot compile and install your own KaiOS

This could be the killer "app" for Svelte, the ultra light web framework. A Brazilian team had trouble getting a non laggy UI in an underpowered POS device. Svelte was the only framework fast enough for a snappy UI and still had best developer experience. There are now 200k of these devices deployed.

https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/349/

Point of Sale right?

Yeah.

Why would they use JS for this kind of task is what make me curious. I'd guess there are better alternatives.

Find one.

I'm definitely not an expert on embedded development but I'd think C/C++ are predominant in the area.

Tried to get a community of young/active people to take ownership of the future of a public project's codebase in either of those two lately? =[

I guess Moore's law allowing web developers to migrate to embedded space. In India, POS devices are Android, the de facto OS and huge talent pool. As full PCs native apps which drive dot matrix printers die, micro PCs and Androids with thermal printers which can print HTML take their place.

Philosophically, these are mobile versions of chromium OS - where gui is handled in js/html and kernel is Linux.

2019 is the right year for this attempt, given the advent of:

1. service workers

2. Cache API

3. Web notifications

4. Web sensor APIs like WebUSB...

5. WebAuth

6. WebAssembly

7. Progressive web app support ..

When Firefox had a go at this in 2012, the web ecosystem didn't have the listed above features. Mozilla was a little early to this game

Hmm, an alternative but still with all the Google tracking. What's the point? I'll stick with Sailfish OS or Librem once it's out.

Well the project is partly funded by Google so all the tracking is a feature.

>the Apple-Android mobile duopoly

A bit of a digression, but it would be great if Microsoft were to open source Windows 8 phone OS. It's probably the best bit of interface design that Microsoft have ever released given that they have never had a particularly strong reputation in this area.

Windows 10 phone is a bit of a step back in UX in my view. But version 8 had mostly the right blend of simplicity and functionality. Plus, it's relatively lightweight to run on modern smartphone hardware.

What a shame we're stuck with the insipid and uninspiring Android and iOS duopoly. Pay a premium to lock yourself into one vendor's walled garden. Or pay less to be tracked to death.

It wouldn't make sense for them to open source Windows Phone, too much of it is in common with components of Windows they don't want to open source. Windows 10 Mobile was a significant upgrade from WP8 in nearly every way, and it would make zero sense to use 8 over 10.

What's really cool is the work a few people have done getting full Windows on ARM loaded onto phones.

To me 8 felt way more consistent than 10. I only used it for half a year in 2015, but it was an enlightenment, since suddenly that whole tile stuff that was so atrocious on the desktop made sense and felt super consistent. Admittedly I only tried 10 on a friend's phone and never had it as my daily driver but it just didn't feel as polished.

"Windows 10 Mobile was a significant upgrade from WP8 in nearly every way" EXCEPT the UI — unfortunately the interface was the main reason Windows Phone fans took up the platform.

Riccardo Mori provides my go-to reference for illustrating the difference between 8 and 10: http://morrick.me/archives/8094

WP8 took on Apple-Android with a beautiful interface; its glance-ability is still unsurpassed. webOS took on Apple-Android with a powerful multitasking interface; its task fluidity is still unsurpassed. I willing used both until the phone hardware was abandoned and still prefer them to Apple-Android today.

KaiOS is a feature-phone OS and does NOT take on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly.

Windows 10 Mobile should have been a significant upgrade from WP8, and could have been if it were a polished release. However, Edge was much less usable than mobile IE (even though Edge rendered nicely). The OS was much less responsive than 8. Lots of the strings (especially in the store) were appropriate for a computer and not a phone (ex: you must have 45 MB of space on your hard drive to install this app kind of thing). And the thing where silverlight apps sometimes couldn't start was a great testament to screwing over developers by throwing out the whole sdk once a year.

On the plus side, W10M did fix notification center which was terribly broken in 8, and I think there was maybe one other thing they fixed?

I just want a mobile phone with a minimalist design--take Punkt's MP02 or the Light Phone II--which, in addition, runs mainline Linux. That's it. Giving mobile phone users the ability to use their devices as they see fit without violating their privacy and rights, as well as respecting their mental health, would be a dream come true.

Another one, yeah!

I hate this: while Apple and Google dominate the whole market and you can't buy a smart-phone that can be secure and does what you want without compromising privacy the FOSS community fights against each other.

Instead of focusing on ONE OS that is open and secure and runs on most of these devices, everyone has to invent their own wheel: postmarketOS, kaiOS, ubuntu mobile, sailfishOS, lineageOS,.......

Instead of one solution that is good enough to compete with the big ones we have hundreds of solutions who suck - each in it's own way. That's why there is still no alternative to Photoshop or Acrobat in 2019 - very sad :-(

> Instead of one solution that is good enough to compete with the big ones (...)

The problem is that 'good enough' is not good enough. Why would anyone throw away their investment in apps and accessories they bought for their current phones by using a phone with a new OS that has little to no market support, no apps, no nothing ?

The only way to break open a market like this is by leapfrogging the competition and offer something so compelling as to offset the initial lack of support. This is how the iPhone and Android devices managed to break Nokia's dominant position in the smartphone market.

This is why BB10 failed, they were just catching up to the dominant players, and even while they had a great implementation it was just more of the same. The only thing that can threaten the current duopoly is something that offers a significantly better UX.

I'd go so far as to argue you need to find what comes next after the hand-held smartphone. It could be a smaller, more intimately worn device (think smart glasses, or a smarter watch, or even something implanted), with more processing done off-device.

Another interesting phone to look at is the Xiaomi Qin 1s which runs a variant of Android Go (they call it MOCOR5), and is a handset for Rmb395. I played with one in a Sundan store in Guangzhou last week. Nice keyboard, screen is good enough, and it has 4G, Wifi, BT - in short faily much everything you would expect in a Android handset at 2x the price only missing the touchscreen. Only reason i didnt buy is because it seems not work outside of China at the moment.

Do these phones run WhatsApp? I feel like that would be extremely important for KaiOS to have any meaningful success with its target market.

Yes they do: https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/kaios/26000006/?category=5245235

But this doesn't include the Nokia ones, does it?

There is an update being rolled out for the 8110 that brings support.

buys 8110 immediately

You supposedly can buy that $7 phone in Indonesia but for me it was impossible to find one. I think it's more of a marketing move.

Do you think there's any chance to get my hands on the common development board/reference design/SDK that I'm sure most of the KaiOS phones are based on? (spreadtrum?)

I tried to find one of the $7 USD KaiOS phones when I was in Indonesia a couple of weeks ago. Seems they aren't actually for sale yet. Tried several Alfamart stores and a phone mall.

Use kaios v1 device, good for dumbphone.

But if they integrate Google services(tracking+telemetry), I never buy it again.

If you change location settings in kai os it still switches on the location by itself...

Anyone doing any development on this platform? A good experience?

It is good with a programmable device with feature phone form-factor. For certain applications, old fashioned tactile buttons are better.

I kinda want a JioPhone2. I miss having a qwerty keyboard on my phone.

I wonder if it could run postmarketOS

Someone is working on a LineageOS-like project for KaiOS called GerdaOS, and there's code for the Jiophone 2 in the branch.

Not sure if it compiles yet for that particular phone but here's the repo if you're interested: https://gitlab.com/project-pris/system

Who will need a "smart-ish phone"?

KaiOS is based on Android..

It's based on B2G/Firefox OS.

Which is heavily influenced by AOSP.

It may not use the Android userspace, but it relies heavily on the 'android' kernel and subsystems. From a security and device maintainability standpoint, those are far more interesting/concerning.

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