Review of Firefox OS and Mozilla Keon | Hacker News Reader

Review of Firefox OS and Mozilla Keon

theregister.co.uk

73 pointsnissimk21 comments

I think a smartphone with an eink screen would do well in this developing market. It would have longer battery life and would be readable in direct sunlight.

I really want an eink smartphone, preferably with FFOS.

The problem I've noticed with e ink is refresh rate. Dragging and scrolling look bad on some of the e ink device I've read about (android devices)

The UI would have to be optimized to fit on one screen as much as possible. For example, the Kindle interface has paged interfaces more than scrolling interfaces. My biggest problem with it is trying to turn multiple pages. It takes too long, because it waits to refresh the display before you can load the next page. That probably has to do with the calculation of where each page begins and ends. I think that is calculated on-the-fly.

The kindle looks good, until you open up the browser. You really don't want to browse the web on eink.

There is a hack for the Nook e-reader that enables a fast refresh rate. Here's a before-and-after demonstration video on YouTube (four taps on the screen enable the fast refresh)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6...

Given that fast refresh rates are possible on e-ink screens, I wonder why e-readers don't have this feature enabled by default. Does it damage the device? Drain the battery? Or shorten the lifespan of the e-reader?

Well it will obviously drain the battery, as e-ink displays only consume electricity on refresh. the 'ink' is either black or white, and changing the state is what costs electricity. Once the state is changed, it doesn't consume any more electricity. So increasing refresh-rate when scrolling increases the amount of current needed to flow through the system, and will indeed drain battery life.

Every few days I'll hit up Geeksphone's site, and every time both phones are out of stock. Tried it again just now:

http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/#buy-it

I'm not sure whether this indicates high demand or a lapse in Geeksphone's manufacturing pipeline.

Are there any developers here who've managed to get their hands on one? Any thoughts?

I missed the initial release by a couple of hours and missed everything.

It's kind of frustrating that they won't take your money for a pre-order, and put in a huge order from China for another batch.

Heh, by complete coincidence I was awake at the moment of the initial release, but I couldn't place an order because I was still waiting for my new credit card to arrive. Dammit Linode!

It's reported to run OK on the Nexus S device which is available used for around 125 - 150 USD. Another question for existing developers/users, how does the experience differ between the tier1 and tier2 devices?

Here's the video of B2G on the Nexus S: http://youtu.be/3b0Iy1V2RWc Looks like it works better on the Keon: http://youtu.be/RyJFB4qzgzo

I got mine last week (Peak), and havent played with it yet. Installed updates that phone offered, and few apps, and thats it ... Although the hardware on Peak is better then Keon, the entire OS feels very sluggish, slow, and buggy ... Maybe I should try installing some nightly versions to test if it got optimised a bit ... Anyway, I like the phone, but I wont be using it as a main phone since it doesn't have Gmail app and I'm used to Gmail on Android for all of my emails ...

I have both Keon and Peak and the Keon works a lot better. They're fixing stuff daily to reach parity or better on the Peak AFAIU

I understand that the goal of Firefox OS is to reach the worldwide billions without smartphones, but is it feasible for them to achieve lower handset prices faster than Android given that MediaTek and SpreadTrum SoC-based devices are selling for >$65 in China?

I think their belief is that they can offer a better experience on very low-end phones than Android can.

The experience is key. There are lot of really, really awful cheap Android phones out there.

Not to overlabour the point, but I find the idea of HTML/JS apps interesting in this context as well- many people looking to make an app might not have powerful machines that can run Eclipse (and certainly not OS X) and compile apps with any kind of speed. HTML/JS could be a great 'light' development environment.

You can write and compile Android apps directly on an Android device.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui

Compile? OK. Write? Can't imagine a worse experience.

Your imagination may have omitted the possibility of using a Bluetooth keyboard.

Bluetooth keyboards do not exactly proliferate the developing world. Presumably you'd want to throw an external monitor into that mix, too.

What exactly do you propose Firefox OS apps to be written on in developing countries? Computers that aren't powerful enough to run Eclipse would likely be no better (in price or productivity) than an Android tablet with a cheap Bluetooth keyboard.

Computers that aren't powerful enough to run Eclipse are already in use by people in the developing world. Very few of them have an Android tablet with a cheap Bluetooth keyboard.

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