This
is an interesting one. Mozilla’s choice of ZTE for its first Firefox OS
phone is curious, to say the least. The open source foundation is
banking on ZTE’s mastery of the low-end market to deliver its first
device. As such, the Open is a largely-low-end device with specs that
will make Android crawl if it ran on top. However, Firefox is built for
emerging markets and the OS can run smoothly on the ZTE Open’s hardware.
The ZTE Open is powered by a Cortex A5 processor clocked at 1GHz and
has 256MB of RAM.
The first Firefox OS phone, the ZTE Open
Other key specs of the ZTE Open include:
3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480
3G (HSPA up to 7.2Mbps), GPRS/EDGE
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
GPS with A-GPS support
3.15 megapixel primary camera
512MB internal storage with microSD card slot and 2GB card in the package
ZTE open runs the HTML5-based OS and comes with Firefox
Marketplace, has social networking apps for Facebook and Twitter,
Nokia’s HERE maps service, Box cloud storage, marquee games from EA
Mobile and Disney Mobile Games.
The ZTE Open is the first handset to appear featuring Mozilla's open, HTML5-based Firefox OS. We
won't be seeing Firefox OS in the UK, US or Australia yet though -
Firefox OS is being touted as very much a smartphone OS for developing
markets.
As
such, the Open will have a very low price point - when asked if it
would be less than USD $200, the Mozilla representative told us it would
be far lower, and networks themselves would make it cheaper still. As
you can see, the Open features a bunch of standard apps - all
HTML5-based - including Twitter, Bing, Pinterest, Wikipedia and
Facebook. Mozilla says it's easy for web developers to adapt web apps
for the platform. Here's the Firefox OS start screen featuring
phone, messaging, web and camera buttons. You swipe from the right to
get to the main app menu screens.
The
Open's 3.5-inch display isn't that impressive, having quite a low
resolution (HVGA or half VGA 480 × 320), while the device is centred
around an ARM Cortex-A5-based MSM7225A chip manufactured by Qualcomm -
the clockspeed of which could be either 600 or 800Mhz. However, the OS was snappy enough on the device, putting aside fears from earlier builds that Firefox OS wasn't up to the job.
Mozilla
has designed a Marketplace for Firefox OS, which it wants to be
completely open for developers to take advantage of. There are also
other default apps including Music and Video hubs.
In terms of a camera and connectivity, you get a 3.2MP fixed focus camera, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and an FM radio.
As you can see, there's also a headphone jack and USB charging port at the top of the device.
Qualcomm
has been working with Mozilla to ensure the Open has "tight
integration" between software and hardware and that it's a "good
telephony experience".
Like
an iPhone, there is just a single physical button to move back to the
start screen, while you also get volume adjustment on the side.
Firefox
OS pulls in contact info and pictures from Facebook - the contact card
enables you to jump straight to someone's Facebook profile.
Firefox OS also has notification support and, like Android, you can quickly adjust settings here, too.
Acatel also has a phone coming out for Firefox OS, called the OneTouch
Fire, while other handsets will follow from LG and Huawei.
Early Verdict
Firefox
OS isn't even in its infancy yet, but it's clear that Mozilla,
operators and manufacturers have one thing in mind for the OS - budget
handsets for developing markets and the ZTE Open is a colourful, cheap
option. We probably won't see the OS on high end handsets any time soon,
but that's no bad thing - while Firefox OS is likeable and flexible,
it's hardly iOS or Android-beating in terms of feature set.
No comments:
Post a Comment