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Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

I loaded up Firefox OS on a Nexus S a few months back and the performance was really really poor compared to Android 4 running on the same hardware.

Their low end device looks similarly specced, so I'm a bit worried about how it will come off. Haven't gone through loading up the latest builds so perhaps performance has improved a lot.

Before Android 4.* (especially 4.1 and Butter) I think there was room for another competitor in the market, but I'm having a hard time believing FirefoxOS is going to be able to make significant inroads.

Android has finally grown up and contract-free low end phones are now available for $60. I would expect the 2013 ultra low end handsets will be 4.* which is really going to be a game changer.

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The performance of Firefox OS today on 800MHz hardware is many times better than it was on the Nexus S devices back in the day. This is partly due to hardware but mostly due to the OS maturing.

In short, today's build of Firefox OS will run very fast on these developer specifications.

Good to hear, maybe time to load it up again to see where it has gone. I was really jazzed about it (bought a Nexus S just for the occasion) but seeing just how bad it was really broke my heart.

Any hint on the prices?

No doubt they will be priced cheaper than the Nexus 4.

Developer preview probably means very small production run, which in turn means high unit price. Final, mass produced devices of course should be significantly cheaper.

"A few months back" is like 1/3rd the lifetime of the project. Also you're comparing a development pre-1.0 release with a 4.x release of another project. On most phones in the target price range, the latter isn't even going to run.

Agree on a few months back perhaps being ancient history.

Disagree that it is unfair to compare FirefoxOS and Android, consumers don't care who started when, they care about the product now. (and let's not forget FirefoxOS is bootstrapped off of Android so they are hardly starting from scratch)

>they care about the product now

They care about what is on their phone when it is released. I'm pretty sure that's not going to be a version "of a few months back" from now!

Conversely, all the really cheap Android phones on sale here run either 2.2, 2.3, or if you're very lucky, 4.0. And I don't expect those to magically get 4.1.2/4.2 anytime soon.

I get the impression the HN crowd doesn't really know what a low end phone is, let alone they have seen or used one.

I live in Rwanda, so I very much know what the IDEOS and company are like. As a matter of fact I have both versions of the IDEOS in my drawer actually.

I'll check out Firefox OS on the latest builds for sure, but I'd be surprised if we weren't seeing the new IDEOS coming out this year with the latest 4.x Android. We'll see.

I hope Firefox OS does well, I'm just saying that their window of opportunity for addressing the low end market with something unique is very quickly closing.

Firefox OS is not bootstrapped off of Android. In fact, it is nothing to do with Android. Firefox OS is a Gecko engine (the one behind Firefox) being run by a light-weight Linux kernel. There is no Android in there.

> In fact, it is nothing to do with Android.

Err, well, no. You're both right. The lowest levels of B2G are the kernel from Android, RIL (telephony stack from Android), and other little bits like that (e.g. gralloc, which is what allows the fast texture sharing). There's a lot of Android in B2G, but it's well out of the view of users.

Yep. Android is going to go over the top this year selling 4.x devices well under the price points of any of the competition.

Software ultimately matters more than hardware and we're rapidly getting to that point in mobile.

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